The sermon, based on John 8:31-36, explores the theme of spiritual freedom through Jesus Christ. It emphasizes that true disciples of Jesus abide in His word, and through knowing the truth, they are set free from the bondage of sin. The speaker addresses the reality of false disciples, who may profess belief but do not possess Christ in their hearts. The sermon stresses the importance of true faith, which is not merely a surface-level belief but a transformative acceptance of Jesus as Lord, resulting in a life directed by His teachings. The notion of perseverance is highlighted, urging believers to continue in their faith, as true salvation is evidenced by an enduring commitment to Christ. The sermon contrasts the spiritual blindness of the Pharisees and religious elites with the genuine belief of those who truly follow Jesus, encouraging self-examination and a deep, personal relationship with Christ.

[♪ Music Playing. Morning family. So we will be continuing on in the book of John. Today we're stepping forward one text. We're going from where we were to John 31-36.

We were in 20-25. And a pretty famous text today that I think everyone pretty much knows, a call that we can be free. Last week we talked about the oneness that Jesus has with the Father. And these words began to work in the hearts of some of the Jewish people to the point where some believed in Him. And so today we move forward from that and we'll be reading verses 31-36.

So if you follow along in the Word of God, that would be great. John 8, verses 31-36. Then Jesus said to those Jews who believed Him, if you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. They answered Him, we are Abraham's descendants, and have never been in bondage to anyone.

How can you say you will be made free?' Jesus answered them, Most assuredly I say to you, Whoever commits sin is a slave of sin, and a slave does not abide in the house forever, but a son abides forever. Therefore, if the son makes you free, you shall be free indeed." There we go. Father God, we thank You this morning for this text and for the power of it, Lord God, and how we can have and know that we have freedom in You, Lord God. We also see, Lord God, the reality of false disciples and those who proclaim it or not, Lord. I pray, Father, this morning that Your Word would do work in our hearts and our lives, Lord God, to glorify Your name and to check our walk in You.

I just pray this in Jesus' name, Amen. And so, here we have what is a doctrine that Jesus is laying down. It's a foundational, fundamental doctrine that Jesus lays down to comfort and to show us the spiritual liberty that we have in Christ. And that His disciples can know that. And for the encouragement of the Jews that did believe, those that did just say it, and many believed in Him.

This is the doctrine that He lays down for them. So Christ, knowing that His words began to work, that the doctrine that He is putting down, that He and the Father are one, that this is starting to work in the people, some of his hearers, he turned his discourse away from what was this confrontation, this all out confrontation with the Pharisees. He turns His attention and He addresses those that are stirred by the words. Those that went from not believing to believing. Weak in belief.

But He spoke wrath first on those who did not believe. If you remember a couple of weeks ago, we talked about how He said four times, you will die in your sins. You will die in your sins. And He doesn't say this as a curse to them. He tells them Because he loves them.

He told us then, he's telling us now. If we don't believe in Jesus, we will die in our sins. And so he addresses these people and so after he spoke those harsh words, those that were hardened in unbelief, He spoke comfort to these few that believe. And this seems to be the nature of God's Word. It speaks comfort to those who truly seek Him.

And those who do not fully receive Him, it's harsh words and it hurts. And that's how it's designed to work. So this text again is in the shadow of the cross. It's about 180 days as this is written away from Christ being crucified on the cross. And so this is the feast of booths or tabernacles.

It's the celebration of when they were the 40 years in the desert and God took care of them. And so the whole land has come to Jerusalem for this and they are celebrating this, God's work in their people. And as they celebrate this, there's hardly a conversation that doesn't include Jesus. They sit down at the dinner table and, hey, you want to pass the lamb chop? Yeah, what did Jesus do today?

What's going on? Hey, did you hear about this? Have you heard about that? And everybody's talking about Jesus. There's hardly anybody that's not.

He caused a buzz that was in that whole region that shook things up. He spoke very controversial about the religion that they all stood on. And so in chapter 7, you remember he talked about the living water And the reality that every person is thirsting for something that the world cannot provide. And so, then Jesus gets up and He says this in the treasury, in the treasury, where people are going to give their offerings. And now you give offerings to be right with God at this at this time you were required X amount They bring their their tithes and offerings may put them in them 13 different horns that we talked about at the time And Jesus gets up and He blows out of the water this whole thing of works.

By standing up and declaring in John 7.37, He stood up and declared, on the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out saying, if anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink Just totally denying the whole system at the time and so in in chapter 8 he tells us that he's the light of the world. He says, I am the light of the world. He's showing that you and I live in darkness, that this world is darkness. And Ephesians 5, 8, that we once were darkness. It's not that we were living in darkness.

We were darkness. We were sin. We were of our Father the devil. Okay, and that is where we were. He tells us that he is the light of the world, showing that this whole world is of darkness.

Spiritual darkness, intellectual darkness, that it is darkness. The unsaved man is blinded, and he lives in moral blindness. He is in darkness and Jesus Came Jesus came to rescue as the light of the world Rescue us from the domain of darkness that we were and we lived in That is the Gospel message right there. That is the work of Christ. Hallelujah.

Okay. He is the light. He is the light. And there is no other light. There is no other remedy.

There is no other solution. Jesus is the light. You can look to other things for the light. You can think that you have joy and light in sports, you can think you have it in food, you can think you have it in vehicles and houses and wealth and popularity. It's not.

It's not going to do anything. You do not have light unless you have Jesus. So He is the light. There is no other way. There's no way around it.

Jesus validated these claims very well when He was on stage of this whole Gospel of John. He all but eradicated disease from the land. And what's recorded is just a small sample of what he's really done. It's a tiny sampling, but his truest work wasn't what everybody thought it would be. To lift him up on a throne and to conquer Rome and to rule the world.

It wasn't that. It wasn't eradicating sickness. It was getting rid of the damning sickness of sin. It was getting rid of what was sin in our world, in our hearts, in our lives, and conquering it by the blood of Jesus. The Pharisees should have been the most supportive of all the men behind Jesus.

And yet in 813, they doubt it and they push back. Their hardened hearts double down on their own ignorance that they had. And it works like that so often. I've been witnessing to a brother who is Catholic. And we tell him the gospel.

He doesn't hear it. The Reformation is a handful of gravel in his underwear. He can't handle it. It bothers him to no end. And so he has to go after an attack and he hates the truth.

But he loves the works of His own religion. And that's the heart of man. That we love what we can put our finger on and what we can work for and what we can do. But when it comes to kneeling at the cross and giving our hearts and our lives to the work of God through His Son Jesus Christ once and for all. That's hard for people to do.

It's very difficult. Jesus responds to them in verses 21 and 24 after the Pharisees double down on who do you think you are? You're the only one that's saying you're all that. He doubles down and he tells them, well, he quadruples down, tells them four times, you will die in your sins. You do not believe in me.

You will die in your sins. You do not believe in me. You will die in your sins." Four times He says it. And so there are questions and accusations. So Jesus, He responded boldly to them.

And so he repeats their sure verdict. If they turned from him, they will die in their sin. There's a lot of ways to die. We've talked about this before. You could die from cancer, you can die from a car accident.

I know a guy, I read of, I don't know him, but he's Teddy Roosevelt's son, who died from a blister on his foot. He got infected and it killed him. There's a lot of different ways you can die, but the worst way that you can die is to die in your sin. And opportunities to turn to Jesus, they don't last forever. And we're gonna go into what it means to, and it hit me two weeks ago when pastor Rick was was teaching on what it is to believe and That is such an open Wide open Question word doctrine Theology to try to wrap your mind around what real belief is and what it looks like.

And so you can't make a list of what things people do when they believe. But opportunities to turn to Jesus, they don't last forever. And damnation has no do-over. When you pass from this life to the next, you don't get the comeback. There is no reincarnation.

There is no purgatory. That's a lie from the pit of hell. There is this life to figure it out. And this life is as thick as a sheet of paper, and that stack goes from here to the moon and back. And you need to figure out in this much time where you will spend eternity.

Because it doesn't have a do-over. You either trust in Jesus now, or you pay the penalty for your sins for all of eternity. And I'm talking to me too. I'm not just spitballing at everybody else. This is a reality that we have to work out our salvation with fear and trembling as we walk that walk.

Jesus tells them and us that He is the only way. The Pharisees refused to believe this. And in verse 30, many believed in Jesus. This is In contrast to what He says to them in verse 44 coming up, there is another confrontation where He speaks. He says, you are of your father the devil and the desires of your father you want to do.

And He goes on and on. And so we see over the course of this gospel, Jesus spends a lot of time showing the difference between true and false disciples. What's a true disciple? What's a false disciple? He is not enamored, he's not wooed and swayed by the crowds to say hey you guys all believe that's great come on let's go have a partay let's go do this thing right?

Now that you believe no he was always working on their hearts and their lives to know whether they are true believers or not. He never stopped at that, to show those that truly belonged to him and who belongs to this world. And in Matthew 7, 21-23, it says, not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord... This is the most grave, heavy text in the Bible. And everybody needs to hear this.

This isn't just written to those people. This is not a service this morning where we go, oh you know what, I know where I'm going. You know those Lutherans, those mega church people, I don't know where they all going, but I know where I'm going. No! This speaks to every person here.

It's meant to wake us up, to tune us up, to change our hearts and our lives, to put our affections at Christ and Christ alone. That's what it's meant for. It says, not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in your name, cast out demons in your name, and done many wonders in your name? And then I will declare to them, I never knew you, depart from me, you who practice lawlessness." See, these people did amazing works.

They cast out demons in His name. They did many things. In His grace, God draws us a picture of this and gives it to us so that we don't spend a life wasted in meaningless works to find out that we don't know Him. I'm pleading with you today to know Him. To take this seriously.

This was to those who are the religious, the elite, the ministerial, the highest end of people. And those who knew Him were the ones that were broken. Those who knew Him were the ones that were broken. Those who knew Him were the ones that knew that they weren't anything in themselves, that knew that they needed Jesus. And he continues on in verses 24-27.

And it reads, "'Therefore, whoever hears these sayings of mine and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock, and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house and it did not fall. For it was founded on the rock. But everyone who hears these sayings of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand, and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, and it fell, and great was its fall." That's any faith that you place not in Jesus Christ. That's any faith that you think you are good in Him, but it is not, because it is of your own works. It is of your own glory.

And again, This is to the religious elite. This was to those who were the top level that everyone looked to. See, some are true disciples and some are false. And Jesus doesn't entrust Himself to them in chapter two, verse 24. He said, he could see the hearts of men.

He did not entrust himself to them because he knows the hearts of men. And the storm that it talks about in this text, it represents the judgment of God and the end. And Great was its fall. Great was its fall. Those who come to Him in the end, they enter into the room and He says, depart from Me, I never knew you.

Great is the fall. It is not a small fall. It is a great fall. See, this world that we live in is filled with people who believe wholeheartedly that they are bound for heaven and they're not. Depart from me, I never knew you." They will be so disappointed that all of their works and all of the things that they did have led to nothing.

It was all the work of the devil. And this again to the ministry elites. And I'll question, what separates us from them? What makes us different from these people? They serve God.

They serve the living God. Matthew 13, 24-30. He puts forth another parable, saying to them, The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. Resent, but while the man slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way. But when the grain had sprouted and produced a crop, then the tares also appeared.

So the servants of the owner came and said to him, Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then Does it have tares? He said to them, an enemy has done this. The servant said to him, do you want us then to go and gather them up? He said, no, lest while you gather the tares, you also uproot the wheat with them.

Let both grow together until a harvest and at that time of the harvest I will say to the reapers, first gather together the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn." See the tares have no fruit, they have no grain, They have no produce on them. And that is how you can tell what is a wheat and what is a tar. A wheat comes up, shoots out. I had some in Canada when I was there by Bonnie's brother. We'd grab a head and you pull it and you go like this and you separate the wheat, the kernel from the husk, and you blow it out and you can eat the wheat.

It's great. It's food. It's what Jesus was doing with His disciples on the Sabbath, right? And it's amazing. But some people don't have wheat.

They don't have fruit. That's how you can tell a wheat from a terror, right? It's a tree, a fig tree that's shriveled up. It's got nothing on it. There's no fruit on it.

And even though thousands would follow Him, in John 6 there was like 25, 000 that were following Him. There was 120, 120 in the upper room that were left of the tens of thousands. The rest of them, they went their own way. And many of them, 180 days later, would be yelling, crucify Him. See, that's the difference.

Wheat tears. And so, many of whom professed in the beginning belief in His name. So let's not let this idea into our head that, okay, I know what I believe and I'm good to go. I don't know what y'all over here think is going on. I don't know where they're going, but I know where I am.

I had that mindset for years. So now, we need to know if our belief in God is faith unto salvation. Not everyone who professes Christ possesses Christ. I forget who said that first, but it's popular. Not everyone that professes Christ possesses Christ.

And so it's the people that are the most confident in the text today, The most confident people in their spiritual walk are the ones that he's talking to that get the repeated warnings. The worst thing I can do is to not present to this body that there may be, very likely be, those here who will hear some day, depart from Me, I never knew you. That you know these things are written, that you may know that you have Jesus, that you have eternal life. This is something that you can't get wrong. And so now we need to know that not everyone that professes Christ possesses Christ.

And we need to live like life understanding that too because people will perpetually disappoint you. You need to walk forward in your Christian life in the Word of God, in the Holy Spirit, in the fellowship of believers. It's the people that are the most confident it was that Christ ended up warning. The worst thing that we can do is to make a false assurance of salvation. So this needs to be a constant tuning fork in our church, in our body, in our ministry, in our lives.

As we move forward, 2 Corinthians 13.5, it reads, examine yourselves as to whether you are in the faith. Test yourself. Do you not know yourselves that Jesus Christ is in you unless indeed you are disqualified? Examine yourself. Question your faith.

Take it to the Word of God. And know, to examine the fruit of your life, It's easy to get caught up in the pride of good works, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life, and to not know Christ. You know, even the demons, even the Demons have a PhD in theology. You ask a demon, do you believe in Jesus? Of course, yeah.

Do you believe that he lived a sinless life? Yeah, of course, absolutely. Do you believe that He died on the cross to save mankind from their sins? Absolutely, of course He did. Yeah, there's no question about that.

Do you believe that He rose from the dead to show and to release everyone from the grave, that we too can be raised from the dead someday? Absolutely. Absolutely. That's a slam dunk. And yet, he's in hell.

This demon knows this. He mentally knows all these things. J.C. Ryle, he quoted, the most dangerous spiritual condition anyone could have is one halfway to Christ. Wanting what Jesus provides, but not willing to give into full demands that He lays on the line of repentance and faith in Him.

Declaration of His Lordship, turning from sin and toward righteousness." See, Christ is not trying to squelch what real faith is. And what He's doing with the Jews right now, he's taking those and he's speaking to them. And he's gathering them like a mother hen to her chicks. And he's pulling them closer to teach them more. And this love of God, it goes way back.

I remember when we preached in Isaiah, and this verse came to mind. Isaiah 42.3, A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoking flax will not quench. He will bring forth justice for truth. You know what a bruised reed is? A reed that's been bent.

A smoking flax. A candle that's just gone out and it's barely smoking. And yet when you put fire above it, it will jump down to it. He will not let that go. His love for us is so great.

The smallest amount of real faith. He loves his children and he pulls them to himself. What he's trying to do here is expose people's real condition because he cares for people's souls. He cares because some are not true disciples. And if you die in your sins, you will pay for your sins in hell forever.

It's like a picture of a great physician and I think we can relate to this some with sickness and things going on in church. A great physician that takes an MRI of your heart and he shows it to you. He says, this is what your heart looks like. This morning we're getting an MRI of our hearts, of our lives. What does that look like?

He's showing us what our hearts look like so that we come to Him. We can have joy and victory in this life here and now, and in eternity with Christ. In verse 31, look at that, I'm finally ready to start the message. He said to those Jews who believed Him, if you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed." He says to the birthmark of true salvation, genuine disciples do not possess a sad, fickle, go-with-the-flow faith. They abide.

They walk. They live. They remain in the Word of Jesus, John 1, 1. They remain in His person through the power of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit lives in them and they walk forward by that power.

They follow Him. They know His Word. They walk in it. They don't fall away from it. It's a biblical doctrine.

The perseverance of the saints. I started looking up verses and I'm like, I'm not going to do that to the people. We'll be there until 3 o'clock. The perseverance of the saints. The charge and the challenge and the encouragement to walk forward in the truth as you get it, to live in Christ, the perseverance of the saint.

This is all evidence of true salvation, of true belief. To walk in it. So when God saves someone, He saves someone on purpose, with a purpose and for a purpose. And that purpose is that they become more like Him. That they are sanctified throughout life to look more and more like Him.

And even if true disciples stumble, God is going to sanctify them through this stumbling. He'll use that. He'll grow them. He'll love them. He'll pull them closer.

Hebrews 3, 5 and 6, and 12 and 13, but Christ as a Son over His own house, whose house we are if we Hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm to the end Run that race don't stop firm to the end Twelve and thirteen beware brethren lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God, but exhort one another daily while it is called today, lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin." See, this is the purpose of us assembling. This is the glory of God's plan in what we do to prompt and to push and to pull and to encourage and to move forward in Jesus Christ for His glory. See, this is God's perfect plan because Jesus is... See, we don't do this because we're holding on to Jesus, but because Jesus is holding on to us. John 10, 28.

And this is God's work in us, not anything that we've done. And I give them eternal life, and They shall never perish. Neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand." See, we can't earn our own salvation. This is the work of God. It's His powerful hand.

This is His love for us. Smoking flax, a bruised reed. This is His work. The hallmark of a true believer is that they continue in the faith. In Matthew 13 or Luke 8, the soils, the thorns, the one that was planted in the thorns, the seed that fell in the thorns, a burst of life came out.

And it was like, and it seemed so legitimate, it came up and it was like, Yeah, you people are great. I'm going to live for Jesus forever, and I want to know what I can do in the church. I want to be involved in the music. I want to be involved in this, that, that, that, that. I'm going to be here all the time.

And so, that happens. And it seems so legitimate. But then when they go back to their life, they got the flashiness of the world. The thorns and the thistles and the garbage weeds come in and they choke it out. And it's gone.

That's it. And in Luke 8.13, it says, "...But the ones on the rock, those who, when they hear, receive the word with joy, and these have no root. Who believe for a while, and in time of temptation, they fall away. It's more of the same. There's no root.

There's no root base. They get shriveled up. There's nothing there. And I think we can all, in our minds, maybe we're thinking about situations like this. How this has happened.

See, these are not true disciples. And you can say, well, what about those? What about those who lived for Jesus? A year, five years, ten years. They did so much stuff.

It looked so apparent. Well, now they're back in the tavern getting drunk and shooting pool. What's going on with that? They show no affections for the Word of God or the work of God like they did. 1 John 2.19.

They went out from us, but they were not of us. For if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out that they might be made manifest that none of them were of us. Their salvation was not true in the beginning. It would have stayed to the end.

If the Holy Spirit comes into a person's heart and life, it's there. It doesn't leave that person. And so There's no such thing as someone who used to be a Christian. Someone that used to be a believer. There are wheat and there are tares.

There's true disciples and there's false disciples. A truly backslidden Christian, because I've made my mistakes, a truly backslidden Christian is miserable in his sin. And They will not be happy. They will not rest until the Word of God and the Holy Spirit have their way with them. It's like King David when he was backslidden.

He was a man after God's own heart. And he was backslidden. And What happened to him? He said even later that he felt like a raisin in the sun shriveled up. There was nothing there.

And so, there's no such thing as a happy, disobedient Christian. So when you walk in your sin, you know that Jesus died for you. And you can't enjoy that. Jesus died on the cross to deliver you from the sin that you're enjoying. You cannot.

You have godly remorse. And that leads to repentance. And that leads to ultimately doing all the right things, making it right. But in the end, it leads to rejoicing, right? It leads to worship.

Because you know that God has forgiven your sin. And you know that you are right with God. 1 John 2, 4. He who says, I know him, and does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him. See, this is, it doesn't sound like it, but this is God's love for us.

1 John 5, 13. These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life and that you may continue to believe in the name of the Son of God. Persevere. Continue. Be steadfast.

And He is giving this to them to encourage them. We all sin. The Apostle Paul sinned. And here's what he had to say about himself. Oh wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death.

This isn't Paul before he got saved. This is Paul after he got saved. See, it's not a life of perfection that we're called to live, or that we're capable of living even, so much as a life of direction. A life of direction in Jesus Christ, in obedience. Our obedience does not result in our salvation.

It reveals our salvation. It shows our salvation. Verse 31 says, if you remain in My Word, There's no such thing as a Sunday Christian. The reason that we're here today is to prompt and to push and to live life together, to encourage and to endure, to stay in Jesus as we live out and we share the Gospel. See, this is the main function of the body, is to propel each other, to persevere, to keep on going, to glorify God.

It's what it's about. We don't do this so we can live our best life now, so that we can have more stuff, so that we can be the next cool guy. We do this to glorify God in heaven. 1 Timothy 2, 4 says, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. To desires all men to be saved to come to the knowledge of the truth.

The blessing of true discipleship knowing God and what He loves and what He hates. And every sin that you have weighs you down. And I don't know how many people have read Pilgrim's Progress here, but an excellent book by John Bunyan. The main character Christian is living life and when he comes into the picture, he's got this burden on his back. It's just, I don't know, like a backpack, a basket full of junk.

And it's sin. It's sin. And we walk through life carrying that load of sin until Christ rescues us from that sin. At that time, it falls to the ground. It's not that we never stumble again, but Christ delivers us from that.

It's this burden that weighs you down. You're in chains, you're in shackles, and that weight of sin, you can never know freedom. Then you find out about God, His love for us in Jesus, the justice, His holiness, His grace, His love, how He sent Jesus, the perfect substitute for my sins, for your sins, to die on our behalf. And you look at it and you go, what can I do? What do I have to do to get some of that, to make that trade my sin for His righteousness?

The answer is nothing. You can do Nothing for it. Break. Get broken. Die to self.

Believe in Him. Nothing else. Recognize that you've been set free from the dominion and the power of sin. It's been crushed by the work of God through His Son, Jesus Christ on the cross. One day, you'll be with Jesus free from all the sin that encumbers us now.

One day we will not feel it or know it. No more tears, no more sadness. This is the only way we can worship. Sin was not a side habit. It was a harsh slave master.

It was not something that we just did as fun. It owned us. Lock, stock and barrel. Some come to church, some come here for the community of it, for the fellowship, for core values or even emotional comfort. And while these are good, the basis is the gospel of Jesus Christ.

It's the delivery of sins bondage on us. You are a slave and God rescues you, not with gold, not with silver, not with your good works, but with the blood of Jesus Christ. There is no other way. In verses 33 and 34, we see their response. In 33 and 34, they answered Him, We are Abraham's descendants, have never been in bondage to anyone.

How can you say you'll be made free? Jesus answered them most surely. I say to you, whoever commits sin is a slave to sin. Again, a harsh slave master. They said they've never been a slave.

They've been a slave to the Egyptians, to the Assyrians, and now every coin in their pocket has has Caesar's imprint on it And so they're saying that they've never they pride themselves in their freedom in their spiritual freedom and maybe we do too Maybe we do too. Maybe we look at our lives and we say, we've got this freedom in Christ. We've got this freedom that we can be and do what we want to do. Yeah, I've been married 12 times, but God forgives sin, so I'm going to go get married again, right? Doesn't God want me happy?

No, He wants you holy. That's what He wants. No one is saved because of their genetics. Romans 6, 8, it reads, now if we died with Christ we believe that we shall also live with him. And Romans 3.23 of course, for all of sin and fall short of the glory of God, no one is exempt.

No one's lived a good enough life. No one's ever been to a place where they haven't had to repent to receive Jesus Christ. No one, ever. And no one ever will be. A slave of sin or a slave to Jesus.

He adopts you as a child, a different kind of slavery. As a child, and the more I walk in obedience to God, the more I do what I want to do, and what I ought to do, and the more it lines up with what God wants me to do. I want to please Jesus. I want to live for Him. It's changing my heart.

It's changing my desires. You say, yeah, but every time it takes time to read the Bible and then I got to do this and that and it's boring and I just, I don't know. You're not saved. You're not born again. You need to get your heart right.

It's changing my heart. It changes your desires and that's freedom. That's freedom. You think you have freedom in your own works and in your own will and what you want to do? Hey, I'm as patriotic as anybody and And I'm a red-blooded American What it took to get where we are as a country have a great deal of respect We don't live in freedom in this country.

We will not know true freedom until we live in Christ. The most free are those progressively renewed by the Word. And their joy and freedom is walking in obedience to God and God's commands for your life. St. Corinthians 3.17, It reads, now the Lord is the Spirit and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.

Right? There is liberty. See, as a result, you become more repulsed by the world and more in love with Jesus. We learn to love the things that he loves and hate the things that he hates. And in verse 35, those that thought they were privileged, and It says, and a slave does not abide in the house forever, but a son abides forever.

It's talking about how a slave does not abide in the house forever. A slave comes and goes. He's in, he's out. He's not part of the family. A son.

Now that son, he abides in the house forever, right? And this is the label. This is the picture that we take on. And So we look at it and we say, well, what about those people that just grew up in a bad environment? I grew up in here or there or in that church or that belief.

I was abused, I was beaten. I just had a bad deal growing up. And now, I came to peace with God, so I don't need to go to church. We've got the thing figured out. It says, therefore, if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed.

There is no excuse. There are no excuses. You either live for Jesus or you live for the devil. You're either redeemed or lost. You're a disciple or you're not.

You're wheat or you're tares. You're fruit or you're a shriveled up leaf. So, as we go forward, we have to ask ourselves, do we have a love for Christ? Do we have that love for Christ? Do we have that walk?

See, And I'm coming back around again to this truth of belief. This truth of belief. What that looks like. Do we have a desire for holiness? Do we have a hatred for the culture, for the influence that TV has on me, or videos, or just this world altogether, the sway and the pull of it.

1 John 5, 2-5, it reads, By this we know that we love the children of God. When we love God and keep His commandments, for this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments, and His commandments are not burdensome. For whatever is born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world. Our faith, our faith, our belief, our faith.

Who is he who overcomes the world? But he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God. And this morning may we all believe that. I mean, really believe and know that He is our Lord. Father, this morning, we know, Lord God, that we will stumble, that we will sin.

Father God, help us in faith, Lord God, to look to the cross and to love You more and the purpose, Lord God, as You sanctify our hearts, our lives, our walks, our attitudes, Lord. Help us to walk closer to You, Lord, to love You more. Father, if someone here today does not know You, Lord, I pray, Father God, that You would work in their hearts and lives until they know You, Lord God, till they surrender and submit their hearts and lives to You. Father, I just pray that You would continue to have patience and grace and mercy on this lost culture that we live in, Lord God, until every last soul that you mean is scooped up, Lord God, for Your glory, I pray in Jesus' name, Amen.