I don't know if some of you have
been here since we've not used these lights. That one started
blinking. And I think that was the last
Sunday that Eric was here. And he said, I got a ladder that
we can reach that with. I said, fine. And then all at
once, we can't meet like we did. I've got bulbs. And whenever
Eric can come back with a tall stepladder, We'll put a new bulb in there,
and then we can turn them all on. All right. Yesterday, I think it was, or
the day before, I watched a YouTube video of one of those TED Talks. I don't know if you all are familiar
with those, but some of them are Interesting, useful, even
inspiring. But this one was of a woman who
said that she had been set free from what she called an evangelical
and fundamentalist cult. And it bothers me that names
like evangelical and fundamental get misdefined But then that's
what happens with a living language. A word
starts out meaning a particular thing, but over time, its meaning
kind of drifts. But anyway, this cult she was
involved in, and she gave the name of it, or I found out what
it was. It was a group called the Assembly.
Her grandfather started it. Her father was a preacher in
it. And she said that when she was five years old, that her
father was standing on a street corner yelling the gospel at
people. And of course, I didn't figure it was the gospel he was
yelling, but whatever they said the gospel was, he was yelling
it at them. And she said, I was there five
years old standing with him in my conservative pink dress. with a white purse over my shoulders,
five years old. And she said, I was just standing
there. Of course, what else is a five-year-old girl going to
do? And she says that this woman, she says, I can still see her. She said, this gray-haired woman
came up to me, and then she got down to where I was, and she
said, someday you'll grow up, and you'll be able to leave all
of this. And indeed, when this woman grew up, saw things as
they were, in particular the horrible abuse that was going
on, she left that group. I do not
know what she believes now, if anything, but I am sure that
anyone who watches that video says, well, thank goodness. She's free. She's free. Well, in one sense of the word,
she is. She's free of one kind of bondage, but that doesn't
mean she's free. There's more than one kind of
bondage in the world. And as we saw when reading these
words, there are many who are in bondage and don't even know
it. and resent the fact that anyone
would imply that they are in bondage. They said in verse 33,
we are Abraham's descendants and have never been slaves of
anyone. How can you say that we shall
be set free? I mean, you can't set free someone
who's not in bondage. Now, within the span of my lifetime,
there's been a remarkable change in the religious fabric of our
nation. When I was a child, there was hardly anyone who did not
claim to be a Christian. Now, the numbers have declined
dramatically. In fact, in my time here, here
living in Rock Valley, there's been some dramatic change in
the religion that dominates this area. Now, it's in superficial
things, it's in outward things, but I do remember when we came
here, having to adjust at the idea that on Sunday, pretty much
tumbleweeds went down Main Street, and the Pizza Hut and Casey's
were the only places open on Sunday. Well, I mean, I don't even remember
hearing kids play. Now, we lived out in the country.
You might hear it out there some, but you didn't hear it in town
much. But things have changed. Things are different. Some of
the differences in our country, that is its religious expression,
and even in our local community have come by way of different
religions coming in or different versions of the Christian religion,
some of them by immigration, some of them simply by people
converting from one religion to another. But one thing has not changed
in all the years that I've lived I get the impression it's probably
always been true. Ever since Adam and Eve was sent
out of the garden, this has remained true. Truth is a hard thing to
find. This is true among the population in general. There are seven. and some billion people on the
earth. Very few know and tell the truth. This is true when you take the
entire population into account. This is true when you take only
professed Christians into account. There are seven billion people
in the world, two billion of them, roughly, profess to be
Christians. Now this includes all the various
forms of Christianity. It would include the Roman Catholics,
who I think they make up a billion by themselves. The Roman Catholics,
the various other Orthodox churches like the Russian Orthodox Church,
the Greek Orthodox Church, the Anglican Church, its American
cousin, the Episcopalian Church. This would include Mormons, Jehovah's
Witnesses, Church of Christ, it includes us. But out of that two billion, not very many know what the truth
is. And that's just as it was in
our Lord's day. Here was this nation called the Jews. It still
existed at that time. That it existed in covenant with
God. That old covenant was still in
effect. And I don't know how many of
them there were in that day. But of all of those Jews, every
one of whom would have said that they were worshippers of Jehovah
according to truth, virtually all of them would have, very,
very few actually did. You say, well, how do you know
that? because anyone who worshiped God in truth would have recognized
Christ for who he was and received him. It is written in John chapter
1, he came unto his own and his own did not receive him. the primary application there
is he came into his own people our Lord according to the flesh
was a Jew and he came to the Jewish nation and as a nation
they turned him out but then it goes on to say but
as many as received him now how many received him? not very many Many got excited
about it. Many were amazed at the miracles
that he was able to perform. Many were amazed at his teaching.
It's things that they hadn't heard before. And they would
say he speaks as one who has authority. He doesn't talk like
the scribes and the Pharisees and the Sadducees do, who are
all about the theory of this and my opinion of that. This
man speaks. It's got the ring of truth about
it. And folks got excited about him. But then the excitement wore
off. And they went back to what they
were. There were a few, a few who received. And that
word, received, doesn't mean to receive as you might receive
a check from someone. That is, they give it to you,
you know, okay, I'll take that, you know. It means like when
you receive guests, you gladly welcome them in. To receive Christ is not simply
to say, oh, all right, I guess if that's the only way to heaven,
I guess I'm gonna have to receive him. That's not receiving the
Lord Jesus Christ. Receiving the Lord Jesus Christ
is not a matter of making a decision after someone's preached a trite
so-called gospel message and told you a sad story and then
said, raise your hand or whatever. That's not receiving Christ.
Receiving Christ is to welcome Him fully and completely in the
wholeness of His person and in the completeness of His work,
to not resist any truth there is about Him. That's what it
is to receive Him. I've got a good picture of what
this word means in my mind, and I think I can describe it to
you well enough. In October of 1983, Bonnie and I and, well,
it would have been Ben and Nathan and then pre-birth Mary, all
moved to Owensboro, Kentucky, where I began to pastor the,
well, it was called Owensboro Baptist Church when I got there.
We changed the name, but it was Owensboro Baptist Church. And
it was six months before I went back home. And we were kind of excited. You know, that's probably as
long as I'd ever gone without seeing my parents. Well, I know
it was as long as I'd ever gone without seeing my parents, without
seeing the folks there in Ashland at the church where Bun and I
were. So it'd been quite a while. We were glad to go back and see
them. And we drove back. And I remember as we drove in,
You know, we lived, you know, I grew up in a housing development.
If I turned off the two-lane highway into the housing development,
the entry was one of those boulevard type things. You know, you got
a little, you know, road going one way here and then a grassy
spot and road, the exit over here. And I pulled in and there's
these signs. Welcome Joe and Bonnie. Mom had
gone out there with some signs that she'd made out a poster
board and mark a lot, you know. So I drove approximately two
or three blocks it took to get to our house and I pulled in
and I didn't honk the horn or anything. But we pulled up and the front door flew open
and here comes my mom. Just like that. She was reaching for all she
was worth. She couldn't wait to get to me
and to Bonnie and the boys and give us all a hug. That's what
it is to receive someone. And not many received our Lord
Jesus Christ in His day. I said that we wouldn't find
many among the population of the earth Nor would we find many
among those who claim to be Christians. And I'm certain that we would
be surprised at the outcome if we took into account only those
who call themselves sovereign grace Baptists. How many of them truly are disciples
of the Lord Jesus Christ. Because you can believe good
doctrine and not believe him. You can hold the line, as it
were, on orthodox truth and yet never have received him. If there's anything that I fear
with regard to myself, you, those we count as brothers and sisters
in the other churches, is that we are carrying on a tradition
handed down to us from the previous generation, and that's all it
is to us, the tradition that we receive from those before
us. because it happens. Our Lord addressed this subject
here in John chapter 8 and in this passage he reveals that
there are both true and false disciples and there is a true
and false freedom. We can summarize what the Lord
says here in this way, true freedom is for true disciples and this
freedom comes to them through the power of truth and the authority
of the Son of God. Now let us consider the sobering
truth our Lord implies in verse 31. He says, verse 31, to the Jews
who had believed in Him, Jesus said, if, now that first word,
if, is a sobering word. Verse 30 says that there were
many who believed in Him. Now sometimes the Bible speaks
from the perspective of God and how God sees things. And sometimes
it speaks to us from what we can see. And so sometimes when
it talks about believing, that is people who believe, it's talking
about those who truly do believe. And sometimes it's talking about
those who simply say they believe, because that's really all you
can tell about it. It's looking at it the way we
would. For example. For 33 years almost now, it'll
just be another month or so, be 33 years, I've been preaching
and I've been telling you I believe this. But that's all you've got
to go on, isn't it? What I've said. And I'm sure if I died and found myself in the presence
of God in my sin, I wouldn't be the first Sovereign Grace
Baptist pastor that that happened to. Our Lord Jesus Christ said, many
shall say to me in that day, Lord, Lord. And that word many
is troubling. Because they would not be saying
Lord, Lord up there if they did not say Lord, Lord down here. These were people who claimed
to believe Christ. These were people who thought
they were doing what Christ told them to do. And yet in the end, it turns
out they did not know him and worse yet, he did not know them. They didn't know him and they
didn't know him because he didn't know them. Doesn't mean he didn't
know who they were. He knew everything about them.
He had never entered in to a personal and intimate relationship with
them person to person. If, if is a conditional word,
it implies uncertainty. Now he looked at these people
and I don't know how he identified who it was that believed on him. I don't know if these people
said anything. I don't know if, as was common
in that day, if you believed a teacher, you were baptized
under that preacher. And therefore, the disciples
of the Lord Jesus would baptize those who claimed to believe
what Jesus was teaching. Maybe that was it, or maybe it
was this. It is written that no man had to tell the Lord what
was on his heart because he already knew what was in men's hearts. I think that's why so often our
Lord gave what seemed like puzzling answers to the questions that
were posed to him. And the reason that the answers
sometimes seem so puzzling is that they said they asked a question
with their mouth, but he knew the question in their hearts.
And it was different from what they asked. And he answered what
was in their hearts. But he says, if. Now, nothing
is uncertain to God. That's how we know that When
our Lord said, if, in expressing an uncertainty,
he was talking about things from the perspective of men. God's
not uncertain about anything, is he? He says, from the beginning,
I have known the end. And why wouldn't he? He's the
author. Would you ever come up to the
author of a book, and you read three or four pages, and you
look at the author, do you know how this ends? Well, of course he does. He wrote the whole thing. And
to him, it's all just one, one thing completely known to him.
And what we call history, the entirety of the existence of
our reality is to him a single and finished book. Now with you and me, it started,
but it's not done. And we don't know what lies ahead
in any detail. So the Lord speaks the word if. The Lord is saying, many of you
believe me right now. You are caught up in what I've
been saying and you've heard something in my words that appeals
to you. You recognize the truth of them
and you have become excited by them. That is all well and good
as far as it goes, but it all means nothing if you do not continue
or dwell in my words. Now it says, or here, hold to
my teaching. And that's a legitimate translation
of it. But the word translated hold here in the New International,
it means to stay or to remain. We read about our Lord went somewhere
and he stayed there for a while. So it's the same word. In fact,
in John chapter one, verse 14, it says, the word was made flesh
and dwelt among us. That's the same word. He stayed with us. He remained.
So he says, if you remain or stay with my teaching or word,
you are really my disciples. Now we rejoice in every profession
of faith made under the preaching of the truth. We take the professions
of people that face value because we've got no other value by which
we can take it. I mean, you know, we can't see
people's hearts, can we? If they listen to our preaching
and say they believe it, we assume they do. But even as we make that assumption,
we know that not everyone who makes a good start will make
a finish. Not everyone who says, I believe,
is truly a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ. And because they
are not truly a disciple, somewhere along the way, they no longer remain in the
truth. They no longer remain in the
word of the Lord Jesus Christ. There can be nothing more disappointing
than to see this happen. And I'll say this, when we see
it happen, we don't even make any final judgments about them. Someone leaves here, well, it's
disappointing, but we're not going to say, well, they're lost
forever. We don't know. We don't know
anymore why they may have left this place than why they came
here in the first place. That's for God to see and understand
and make judgments about. But looking at it in the only
way we can, it's certainly a disappointment if the continued preaching of the
word of Christ does not keep a person. Now why would our Lord put a
question mark on the faith of those who at that moment believed? Well, he knew that their faith,
the faith they had just expressed one way or another, even if only
silently in their hearts, he knew that that faith was going
to be put to the test. You see, an untested faith is
an unproven faith. I'm not an aeronautical engineer.
You show me an airplane and tell me that thing can fly. I'm going
to take your word for it. But then again, I might not take
your word for it enough to go get in it and say, let's take
off. I'll say, well, good, let me see it. Fire that thing up,
let's put it to the test. Let's see if it'll really do
it. And you take off and you fly around a little bit and land,
then I'll get in it. Then I'll have confidence enough. And faith,
if our faith is to be proven in any way, shape or form, it
must be tested. Peter said, in this you greatly
rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer
grief and all kinds of trials. These have come so that your
faith, which is of greater worth than gold, and gold even perishes
though refined by fire, so that your faith may be proved genuine
and may result in praise, glory, and honor when Jesus Christ is
revealed. You know, on the one hand, we
pray, as our Lord taught us to, do not lead us in to trial. And on the other hand, we think,
but if my faith is not tried, it has not been proven. And that's why, even though our
Lord taught us, do not lead us into trial, he will lead us into
some. Our faith will be tested. And
I came up with four ways I know that a believer's faith is tested. It can be tested by a trial of
persecution, whether light persecution or severe or anything in between.
There are some of our brothers and sisters in the past who have
been persecuted to the point of torture and death. And you
and I have probably not suffered any persecution for what we believe
and maybe a sideways glance by somebody or the loss of a friend
or something like that. But our Lord says, if the world
hates you, keep this in mind, it hated me first. And the fact
and the reason it hates you is because of me. But there's a trial of persecution
and that's what was being addressed in the book of Hebrews and in
the book of Revelation. As believers were suffering persecution
for the cause of Christ and some of them were thinking to themselves,
maybe we've gone the wrong way, maybe to avoid this persecution
we need to adjust our message or we need to give it up altogether. And then there's the temptation
of fleshly religion. You know, in the United States,
and probably in other, what you might call modern countries,
you've got a veritable smorgasbord of churches you can go to. I
mean, if you've got an interest in church, that is, if you're
religious at all, somewhere out there, there is a church that
will give you what you're looking for. And sometimes people hear the
word of Christ, they hear the truth of it, they profess to
believe it, but somewhere along the line, another version of
it, who has a more enjoyable, if that's the word, I hate to
use that, because I enjoy our worship, but you know what I
mean. Worship services that are more exciting to the flesh, and,
or, in whatever way that the flesh
can be, you know, excited with these things. Or has programs
for this or that. Or the preacher is the kind of
person who can excite the emotions and, you know, get people going.
Folks go after that. And you know, it can be enticing
to us, too. After all, we're still flesh.
And the things of the flesh are as attractive to us as they ever
were. then there's the trial of hard circumstances. Nobody in the world has a life
free of difficulty, and that goes for believers too. I've seen on Facebook, you know, during this
coronavirus business, several of those from India and
Africa who have friended me on Facebook because, I mean, I haven't
a clue who they are. You know, they know somebody
that knew somebody that knew somebody that knows me, you know,
and so they send, and I always accept their friend requests
because it gives me an opportunity maybe to communicate some truth
to them. And many of them are saying, have said things like,
you know, with regard to the virus, well, God is bigger than
the virus. Of course he is. What's that
got to do with anything? See, what they want you to think
is, and this is where they lead them, God's bigger than the virus,
and if you'll just trust him, you won't get it. I'm sorry,
friends. That's not the way it works.
God was bigger than whatever disease it was that took Lazarus
out. God's bigger than coronavirus,
and we know that because we know that it's God who sent coronavirus,
and it's gonna stay here until it's done doing whatever God
sent it to do. And one of the things that he
will have sent it to do, I'm pretty sure, and I'm just speaking
from the statistics, one of the things he will accomplish with
this virus is bringing home some of his chosen. They will. contract the disease
and they will die of it. Doesn't mean they're under a
curse from God. Doesn't mean they didn't believe God. Doesn't
mean that their faith was weak or they could have overcome. One American pastor did that
early on. Oh, God's bigger than the virus.
And about six weeks later, he was dead because he wouldn't
pay attention to any of the advice that medical professionals gave.
regarding staying away from it. But sometimes hard circumstances
come on people, horrible things happen, such as happened to Job,
and they begin to wonder, maybe I don't believe God, or maybe
there's really not even a God to believe in, or if this was
what believing God gets you, what's the use? And they depart. And then there's the trial of
self-disappointment. Now, I'll be honest with you,
this one probably is the greatest trial I face. And maybe it's
the same for you. Because after all, being citizens
of the United States of America, we have our troubles, but, you
know, not nearly like people in some other countries do. And in as much as you all have been
around for a whole lot of years, I'm assuming at this point that
you're not particularly attracted to the fleshly religion. And
I've not heard of any severe persecution. And that leaves
this, self-disappointment. I am not what I thought I would
be when I started. I imagined and I was even told
as a child and a teenager and young adult, I was told that
there's progress of getting better, of overcoming this sin and that
sin. and the mind being changed so
much that this sin is no longer a temptation to you, and that
sin's no, it's gone, it's free from your life. And I'm gonna
tell you this, you know, 65, I'm not the oldest person in
the world, but I'm certainly older than when I got started.
And nothing's changed. Really. I'm the same man in my
mind. And that's so disappointing. And I think things like, how
could a man like you be a child of God, much less a pastor of
a congregation of the children of God? What right have you to
speak anything with authority? And then I begin to wonder, well,
is there anything to this at all? Shouldn't it have had some dramatic
effect on me? And shouldn't I be getting better
and better in every way on every day? See, the devil uses things like
that. That's how he gets into our minds. He brings guilt. David said, let them be desolate
as a reward for their shame, who say unto me, aha, aha, I
caught you. And we sin, whether it ever expresses
itself in outward action, it's there in our hearts and we know
it. And the Lord told us that sin in the heart, it's as much
guilt as sin in action. And our conscience will bear
witness to that. And when these things happen,
and certainly when they break out into actions, right there
is the devil or one of his cohorts saying, aha, you said you were
a believer in Jesus Christ, but look at you now. What do you
got to say now? You hypocrite, there's nothing
to you. And so long as we continue thinking
in the flesh, we're going to have to agree with the devil,
and our conscience will be pierced. But if we understand the gospel
of the Lord Jesus Christ, when the devil says, well, I caught
you, we can say, well, that shouldn't be very hard to do. Oh, but you're
such a hypocrite, man. I agree with that. You're not
worthy to be a child of God. Oh, I've known that all the long
time. You're not telling me any news. God's gonna damn you. No, Mr. Devil, he's not going to. Because he didn't accept me because
of what I was doing. Therefore, he's not gonna reject
me for what I've done. And we're tried in these things,
I mentioned four things, and sometimes they're all bundled
together. Well, he says, if, what does he mean if? If they
dwell in his word to stay there and to remain. And this is fulfilled
in the words from Hebrews 11, these all died in faith. Why did they die in faith? Because
they held to, they remained in the word of Christ. A true disciple is nothing more
and nothing less than someone who continues in the faith until
he dies. Now what's promised to these
true disciples? Now understand, they do not become
true disciples because they persevere. In fact, the tense of the verb
shows that. He says, if you hold to my teaching,
which then he's talking about something in the future, isn't
he? He's talking about sticking with the truth until the end.
That's a future thing. But he says, if this future thing
is true, then you are presently my disciple. So you see, the
remaining, the faithfulness, it doesn't make it true. It just
proves it to be true. All who are true disciples of
the Lord, will remain faithful unto death. What's promised to
them, they will know the truth. Now it might sound strange to
say to those who already profess to believe Christ that they will
come to know the truth sometime in the future. Because that's
what he's saying, if you hold my teaching, future, you will
know the truth. Well, while those who heard him
knew many true things, they did not yet know the truth. For the truth is not just a collection
of facts, it is a person, and the person had not yet been fully
revealed. But if they were truly his disciples,
they would come to know that truth. He said, blessed are they
who do not fall away on account of me. And what does he mean? Well, what he's saying is things
are going to happen here shortly that are going to make some fall
away from me. Blessed are those who don't.
And what was he talking about? Well, let's look up here at verse
27. It says, they did not understand
that he was telling them about his father. Jesus said, when
you have lifted up the son of man, then you will know that
I am." Now, our translation says, you will know that I am the one
I claim to be. And at least in my copy of it, it's got the words,
the one I claim to be, it's got them in brackets. And what that
means is the translators put it in there because it seems
to them the sentence didn't make sense without that. But here's
all that is recorded. in the Greek of this passage.
When you have lifted up the Son of Man, you will know that I
am. I am. Now when it's talking about lifting
up the Son of Man, what's it referring to? It's talking about
Him being lifted up on a cross. He's saying when I've been crucified
and then all that goes with it because the cross is not, when
the cross is spoken of or the crucifixion of our Lord is spoken
of, it's generally speaking not spoken of as an isolated occurrence. It's speaking of
all that pertains to that cross. And so he would be talking about
the fact that he would be despised and rejected of men, a man of
sorrows and acquainted with grief, and that they would nail him
to a cross, that he would bear the wrath of God, and that he
would die, and then he would be buried. And then that he would
raise from the dead, be in ascent to the right hand of God, there
to wait until God makes his enemies a footstool for his feet. He
says, when you see that, then you will understand that I am. He said to them in verse 24,
I told you that you would die in your sins. If you do not believe
that I am, you will indeed die in your sins. And in verse 58, He says, I tell you the truth,
before Abraham was born, I am. Now, we only know of one other
person who ever used that phrase about himself. And that was the
one who spoke to Moses from the bush. And Moses said, you've
got to give me your name so I can tell them who it is that sent
me. He says, I am that I am. You tell them I am sent you. And now our Lord comes and he
says, when you have lifted up the son of man, then you will
know that I am. You will understand. what no
one else has been able to understand. The article, the first article
I put in the bulletin talking about that thief, how in the
world did he ever come to the understanding that he got while
on the cross? There wasn't anyone there standing
there teaching him why the Spirit of God taught
him. And he understood that Jesus
is I am. It says of these who know the
truth that they would be set free. They would be set free by the
truth of who he is. You know, when you know who Jesus
Christ is, you're not in bondage to anybody anymore. Now we willingly
submit to the authorities that God sets up in this world. so
long as those authorities don't tell us to do something contrary
to what Christ told us to do. But we're not in bondage to them. Knowing who He is, we have become
His subjects. The truth will have set us free
from everything that holds us in bondage. The truth sets us
free from the law, sin, and death. And the truth sets us free from
the fear of death, for it says the devil holds people in bondage
through their fear of death. Bondage to what? Bondage to trying
to act good enough to get God not to kill them. That's what it comes down to. Some people think they've been
freed when all it is is they've been moved from a small jail
cell to a bigger one. If you've got cattle in a corral,
and you open up the gate, and they look out there and they
go, we're free. I know they don't really think in those terms,
but they all seem to head for the gate. So they got a sense
of, we're free. And they go out to the pasture.
And they're running around and jumping and feel like, we're
free, we're free, we're free. They just haven't reached the
barbed wire yet. That's why they think they're free. There is
a kind of freedom that isn't freedom at all. If a man's in
jail and his buddies come and break him out, is he a free man?
No, he's not. The law's after him. They're
hunting him down. He'll never be free till he's
dead. There's only one way to be truly free, and that's for
somebody with the authority to set you free, set you free. He says, if the Son sets you free, you
will be free indeed. We are all born slaves, and there's
no way for a slave to free himself. The only way for a slave to be
set free is either for his slave owner to set him free or for
that slave to be taken to a place where the slave owner has no
jurisdiction. That's what the Underground Railroad
was. Imagine if a slave in the American South of 160 or so years
ago had escaped the plantation. Is he a free man? not so long as he's within the
boundaries of the United States, because there will be people
looking for him. The only way he'll be free is if he can get
to Canada, and that's where they were heading. That's where the
Underground Railroad took people. Well, once they're in Canada,
nobody in the United States has authority to go get them. Now here is what it says happens
to us, we who are law slaves and therefore sin slaves and
death slaves, that if the Son sets us free, forever. Slaves come and go. Slaves are accepted and approved
one day, rejected and whipped the next. The Son abides forever. And if the Son, and that's who
they would learn that He was, if the Son sets you free by His
death, burial, and resurrection and ascension of the right hand
of God, if He sets you free you are really free. You aren't just
getting out of a corral into a big pasture. You are all together
free. There's no sin on you. The law
is not after you. God's not hunting for you. Death's
not waiting for you. That's freedom. And if you are his true disciple,
you are free. because he has set you free.
Father, bless your word as only you can. In the name of Christ,
we pray it. Amen.