©1999 Larry Huntsperger
Peninsula Bible Fellowship
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10/24/99
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Freedom Pt. 3 - Abide
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John 8:31-32
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10/24/99 Freedom Pt. 3 - Abide
John 8:31 ¶ Jesus therefore was saying to
those Jews who had believed Him, "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. "
We are into our third week
in a study of the freedom offered to us through
Christ.
So far our study has centered on comments made by
Christ Himself
in the 8th chapter of the Gospel of John.
And just to help us get back into this study
let me remind you where we've been the past
couple of weeks.
We began the study by recognizing
that what our culture offers as "freedom"
and what our Lord offers as freedom
are two very different things.
Our culture believes that freedom
means having the legal right to live out
the inner slaveries that dominate our lives.
We are by nature
such self-deceptive creatures.
We know ourselves well enough
to know there are forces at work within us
that dominate our lives.
We have seen our anger,
our fears,
our passions,
our addictions,
our prejudices,
and our desperate need for validation
and recognition from those around us.
We know the power of those forces
to dominate our lives.
But we dare not admit to ourselves
that we are enslaved to those forces.
So we skillfully redefine freedom
so that freedom now means
I have the right to live out those inner
slaveries
without being restricted by the society
around me.
We currently live in a society
that offers
one of the highest levels of social freedom
in history,
and yet we are a population
more deeply enslaved to our own areas of
inner bondage
than ever before.
And as we have moved into this study on freedom,
the first great distinction we've seen our Lord
offering us
is the distinction between social freedom
and true freedom of spirit.
What our Lord offers us
is not the right to live out
those areas of inner bondage that dominate
our lives,
what our Lord offers us
is the strength
and the knowledge we need
to break the power of that bondage in
our lives.
John 8:36 "If therefore the Son shall make
you free, you shall be free indeed.
And then last week we took one more step in our
thinking,
recognizing that Jesus makes a distinction in
this passage
between being granted freedom by God
and actually experiencing the reality of
that freedom in our daily lives.
When our Lord said,
"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 linked two concepts together - TRUTH and
FREEDOM.
And it is clear from His comments
that without the one
we will not know the reality of the other.
When we come to Christ in faith,
trusting our lives,
our sins,
and our futures into His hands,
one of the many first things He does in our lives
is to free us forever from both sin
and the Law
by a sovereign act of His will.
And before we complete this series
we will look closely at what that means.
But our Lord also links
our experiencing the reality of that freedom
to our knowing and abiding in His truth.
The chain may have been unclipped from around our
necks,
but as long as we still believe it's there
it continues to have the power
to hold us in bondage.
And then I spent our final few minutes last week
attempting to redefine TRUTH
in a way that is more consistent
with the way the concept is used in
Scripture.
We live in a culture
that believes TRUTH,
and especially RELIGIOUS TRUTH
can be separated from reason and logic.
Experience alone
is accepted as an adequate basis
for declaring something as true.
In our culture, if I experience it,
then it is accepted as TRUTH
even if it is completely inconsistent
with reason and logic.
When our God calls us to know the truth
He is not asking us to plunge into some sort of
mystical
or "meaningful" religious experience.
He is calling us to carefully,
logically,
honestly examine the facts.
I find it fascinating that Jesus lived 33 years on this
earth,
and He lived 3 full years
on a full-time basis with His first 12
disciples
before He asked them,
"Who do you say that I am?"
He didn't grab the microphone,
and jump up on stage,
with the lights flashing,
and the crowds cheering,
and declare Himself the Messiah.
He lived with those men day and night
for several years
so that they could see every aspect of His
life,
under every possible circumstance.
And then,
and only then did He ask them
to reach their conclusions
about who He was.
That's God's concept of truth.
It is not even remotely an experience-based leap
of faith.
It's deeply rooted in the verifiable facts
offered to us by our God
about who He is
and what He's asking from us
and what He's offering to us.
And as long as I've gotten into this
I think I'll go a step farther
and offer a personal comment
to some of you here this morning.
There are some of you here today
who have come with a great deal of skepticism,
even antagonism toward what you believe to
be Christianity.
Maybe you've been coming for some time.
Maybe this is the first time you've ever been
here.
You've brought with you
a whole bunch of questions
and confusion
and concerns about what you believe to
be Christianity.
Maybe in the name of Christ
some well-meaning folks
tried to cram some sort of religious
experience down your throat,
promising you that it would change your life.
Maybe they succeeded,
and you tried hard to make it work,
but when the high was all over,
and the crowd went home,
and the feelings went away,
you knew nothing had really changed.
Or maybe you were caught up in one of those groups
who shoved an offering plate in your face
every time you stepped through the door,
and who promised you that
if you would show up at every meeting,
and fulfill every duty
that the church thrust upon you,
you're life would be transformed.
Or it may be that you've never before dared to get
near THE CHURCH until now
because you just couldn't handle the thought
of getting near a bunch of self-righteous
hypocrites.
I don't know what kind of heritage
you've brought to this point in your life.
But one thing I do know -
God wants you to make your decision about
Him on the basis of truth.
He loves you,
and He wants you to know
the reality of that love.
The time will come
when He will ask you for your submission to
Him.
But I also want you to know
that God is not a door-to-door
vacuum cleaner salesman.
He is not trying to trick you
into a decision
for which you don't yet have all the facts.
And I want you to know that it's OK
to just sit,
and listen,
and learn,
and ask questions if it helps,
until you have the information you need
to respond to your Creator.
The time will come
when you have the knowledge you need
to make the choices He wants you to make
and you, too, will hear Him asking you,
"Who do you say that I am?"
asking you to respond by saying,
"You are my Lord and my God."
But God isn't in the business
of peddling high-pressure religious experiences
to ardent seekers.
He isn't looking for throngs of faithful followers
fervently committed to keeping His system.
He's simply seeking to restore
each human being to an eternal love union with
Himself through Christ.
That restoration does involve our choosing to
submit to Him as our God,
but that submission is no blind leap of faith.
It is a commitment based upon our knowledge of
the truth about who He is,
and what He asks of us,
and what He offers us through His Son.
Which brings us to the real point of focus
I want us to spend the rest of our time on today.
And it concerns a fascinating word in Jesus'
comments that I mentioned last week,
and one I want us to look at
a little more closely
before we move on to the next step in
this study.
It's the word ABIDE,
found in Jesus' opening comments in John
8:31:
..."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."
The word that we have translated as "abide" here in
the NASB translation of John 8:31
is used 147 times throughout the New
Testament.
Sometimes it is translated as "abide",
as it is here,
and in such passages as John 15:4-7
where Christ says,
John 15:4 "Abide in Me, and I in you. As
the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless
it abides in the vine, so neither can you,
unless you abide in Me.
This same greek word is not always translated as
"abide" in the New Testament.
Sometimes it is translated as "remain"
or "continue"
or "endure"
or "stay".
In one passage it is used to contrast
the relationship a servant has to the family estate
with that of a son.
It says that a servant does not always "abide" in the
home,
but a son "abides" forever.
And when Jesus talked with His followers
about the relationship to His Word
that has the ability to bring about freedom in
our lives,
He selected this word "abide".
Now, I want to be careful here
with what I say
so that I am not misunderstood.
You see possessing an abiding relationship
with the Word of God
is not the same thing
as reading it,
or memorizing it,
or quoting it,
or studying it.
Many thousands of people throughout history
have read God's Word,
and studied it,
and memorized it,
and quoted it,
and never know the freedom Christ promises us in
this passage
because they did not abide in His Word.
And we need to make no mistake here.
Jesus is making the human race
an amazing promise in this passage.
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..."
He is making an absolute promise
that an abiding relationship with what He
says to us
will always produce greater freedom in
our lives.
You know what that means, don't you?
For one thing it means
that if my relationship with God's Word
is not producing a growing freedom of spirit
within me,
then I am not understanding
and applying it correctly.
It certainly means
that if God's Word is being used
to produce a greater sense of bondage in my
life
then I am not relating to it as He
intended.
You see,
in this passage here in John 8
our Lord is providing us
with both an amazing promise
and a powerful protection against
deception.
The promise is obvious -
as we develop and abiding relationship with His
Word
it WILL bring about real, true, growing
inner freedom in our lives.
And the protection, I think, is obvious too -
no matter who's using it,
no matter who's speaking it,
or writing it,
no matter how persuasive it may sound,
if the Word of God
is used in such a way
that it crushes my spirit,
or brings a sense of fear,
or inner bondage of spirit,
I am not hearing it correctly.
When I correctly relate to the Word of God it will
increase my true inner freedom of spirit.
So, then, what does it mean to "abide" in His Word?
Well, the first thing I want us to notice
as we try to work out an understanding
of what this means
is to see that Jesus took a word
that is normally used to describe
our relationship to a physical place
and used it to describe our relationship to
what He has said to us.
If you and I were driving down Roosevelt Ave.
and I pointed up at a log house
sitting on a little hill
and I said to you,
"That's our home. I live there",
it would be a logical statement.
But If I pointed to some words printed on a piece of
paper and said,
"That's my home. I live there.",
you would probably ask me what in the world I was
talking about.
And yet, that is exactly what Jesus is doing
when He talks about us "abiding" in His Word.
He is talking about His Word becoming
the place in which we live.
Now let me offer you a definition of "abiding" as
Jesus uses it in this verse
and then I'll give you an example or two
that may help explain what I'm trying to say.
Abiding in God's word means correctly
understanding what He is saying
and then trusting it enough
to build my life around it.
When I abide in something God has said
it means that that truth
has become my home.
It has become the place from which I start all my
thinking,
and the place to which I always return.
Developing an abiding relationship
with any statement in God's word
is not a quick
or an easy process,
and it never just happens.
It always involves
an active process of choosing to trust
both Christ Himself
and what He is saying to me.
I am a preacher.
I have spent most of my adult life
studying the Bible.
I have accumulated a great deal of knowledge about
a number of Bible passages.
But I only ABIDE in a very few of them.
And generally
that abiding has not come easily.
Accumulating Bible knowledge in itself
will never produce an abiding relationship
between us and the Word of God.
The knowledge is necessary,
but it is only the beginning point.
EX.
In Rom. 13:1-2 our Lord says to us:
Let every person be in subjection to the
governing authorities. For there is no
authority except from God, and those
which exist are established by God.
Therefore he who resists authority has
opposed the ordinance of God; and they
who have opposed will receive
condemnation upon themselves.
Now, I can read that passage
and gain the knowledge about what God says
concerning the human authorities in my life.
That's easy.
But developing an abiding relationship with that
passage
is one of the most difficult callings
most of us will ever undergo.
It means I must actively choose
to trust God to work through those authorities.
It means I must let go of my stubborn will,
and my determination to win,
and my sneering antagonism toward the
absurdity and stupidity
I see in the laws and the authority
personalities I live under.
And it means I must honestly face the fact
that every time I choose to disobey
some law
or some authority I am under,
so long as my submitting to it
does not cause me to sin,
what I am really doing in that disobedience
is telling God He is wrong,
or telling Him I refuse to trust Him.
Developing an abiding relationship
to that one passage
means I allow my God to break me
to the point where I will choose
to make heart submission to authority
the place where I begin all my thinking
and living,
and the place to which I always return.
And obviously,
very few Christians
ever choose to abide in that aspect of God's
Word.
Simply put, when I choose to abide
in some statement or concept in God's Word,
it means that
I establish a deep, trust friendship
with what God has said at that point.
I know our time is gone,
but before I leave this
I want to make just one more important
distinction.
Abiding in God's Word
is not the same thing
as submitting to it
or choosing to obey it.
We frequently choose to obey God's Word for all
sorts of different reasons.
We can submit to it
because we know God is bigger than we are
and we fear what He will do
if we disobey.
That is not abiding in His Word.
We can submit
from social pressure,
or from habit,
or from a sense of religious obligation
or duty.
We can submit
because we are trying to win God's approval.
Though we will likely reap the benefits
that come from good choices in those
situations,
it will not lead us into the kind of freedom
of spirit that results from truly abiding in the truth
we have come to love.