[Music] hi and welcome to this week's episode of reading the gospels through hebrew eyes the truth will set you free that's one of those sayings lifted from the pages of the bible that is often twisted around to mean any number of things depending upon who the speaker is what point he or she is trying to make and the audience that these words are addressed to so are we talking about an ideological truth a religious truth a moral truth a political truth what kind of truth are we talking about and what do we mean it's going
to set you free free to be something free to do something for you to be kind of a self-determining individualist in the the the american sense of the word free to just do whatever i want to do and be whoever i want to be i mean what kind of freedom are we talking about so what we need to do is not to look at this phrase in isolation but we need to look at it in its immediate and its big context so what's going on in john chapter 8 between jesus and his interlocutors how are
the words such as truth and free how they used in the rest of john's gospel so that's the only way we're going to really truly understand what is being communicated here not by simply lifting out that phrase and placing it in anyone's mouth who can make it mean whatever they want it to mean so john chapter 8 uh verses 31-36 this is the gospel reading for a number of churches coming up with coming up on reformation sunday and so that's why i chose to look at this particular gospel for this week so let's begin with
the opening couple of verses this is john chapter 8 verses 30-32 as he was saying these things many believed in him so jesus said to the jews who had believed him if you abide in my word you are truly my disciples and you will know the truth and the truth will set you free now there's a very minor grammatical point that i need to point out here so you'll see even in the english translation that many believed in him and then the next phrase is they believed him slightly different grammatically some people try to make
a big deal out of that and say well there's actually a difference between believing in him and believing him not true they both basically mean the same thing yes there's a slight grammatical difference but the the meaning of that particular phrase in both cases is basically the same you're believing christ or you're believing in him however we have a question that comes up and that is so these who believed in him or they believed him well what begins to happen as this conversation goes on is that this this relationship between the jews who had believed
in jesus and jesus begins to unravel big time so here's what happens we kind of go from bad to worse so in the next few verses from verse 33 all the way to kind of the end of this episode in verse 59 we have this happening so in verse 33 they say to jesus we've never been slaves to anybody but as jesus points out they're really slaves to sin well that leads to an ongoing conversation in which now jesus says you're actually seeking to kill me because my word has no place in you that's verse
37. and then jesus says verse it just gets even worse here you get to verse 44 jesus says the devil is their father and then everything wraps up here in verse 59 where they try to stone him so we begin by saying they believed him or they believed in him and then at the end of the story this one in whom they supposedly believed now they're trying to stone to death well how do we explain this well i think basically what is happening here is best explained by use of other passages in scripture for instance
if you turn to the well-known parable in matthew 13 which is the parable of the sower you see that when the sower goes out to sow the seed and the seed is the word of god that it has a different impact upon those who hear it so for instance the seed that fell on the path jesus says well these are the ones where the evil one satan comes and snatches away what's been sown but there's some that falls on the rocky ground these are the people who basically believe for a while they receive the word
with joy but they don't have any roots they're shallow and so after a while when tribulation or persecution or some other troubles come along because of the faith they fall away you also have some that are characterized by the thorns the seed falling among the thorns well they grow but what happens is the cares of the world the deceitfulness of riches all of these various carnal worldly concerns chokes the word and it proves un fruitful but then there are those who receive the word and they understand it they bear fruit and these are characterized as
the good soil so those who are engaging in this rapidly uh agitated dialogue with jesus in john chapter eight they're certainly not the ones that are characterized as the seed falling on the good soil uh they're either two or three in this particular parabolic characterization of believers well what does jesus say we are to do he says that if you're truly my disciple you're going to do what you're going to abide abide in my word several months ago we did a video on john chapter 15 the language of the vine and the branches and we
talked about that then and here's a slide that we used at that particular point so this is the verb in greek minnow which means to remain and on the bottom half of that slide you can see some of the various other ways in which it's translated in the new testament so to remain to stay to reside to dwell to endure to continue and it's used a lot of times in john's gospel about 112 in the whole new testament but 66 of those are in john's writings got 40 in the gospel of john you have a
total of 26 in first and second john in the gospel of john it's used to talk about how the spirit remained minnow on jesus in chapter one in chapter eight the one we're looking at here to abide in the words of christ to menno in those words or to minnow to abide in christ's love so the basic idea is this right now as i'm talking to you in this video i am minnowing that is to say i'm sitting here i'm in a chair in my study in my house i'm not moving around i'm not leaving
i'm not absenting myself i'm not engaged in some sort of search i'm not on a hunt i'm sitting here i'm not moving i am one who menos i'm residing i'm staying and that's the idea abide in christ abide in his love abide in his words in other words where jesus is stay put stay by jesus stay in him with him that's all it means it's not so much of a of a doing kind of verb as much as it is just a staying put kind of verb abide in the words of christ that's what he's
talking about so abide in his words let his word swim in his words as a word let his words encompass you be in him that's what he means by abide in his words then he says you will know the truth and the truth will set you free the word for truth here in greek is alethe alethia and i think it's best not to take this kind of in a general sort of truth certainly not a kind of a a political truth or ideological truth but instead to think of truth here you will know the truth
and the truth will set you free think of this as basically another way of saying jesus in fact in chapter 14 of john jesus says to thomas i am the way and the truth the alathia i am the truth and the life no one comes to the father except through me so jesus is the truth he is the truth embodied he is the truth sent by god and this of course is in in opposition to the father of lies to the devil the one of darkness christ is light he's life he's truth all truth is
in him everything that is not true is not of him so he is truth incarnate so we will know the truth not in the sense of two plus two equals four but in the in the very intimate sort of kind of a hebrew way of knowing to in in hebrew to know yadah is the sense of an intimate experiential knowledge of something really truly deeply experientially knowing it we will know the truth that is to say we will know christ and christ as the truth will set us free now we're gonna talk more about freedom
in just a minute as we work our way through the rest of these verses let's move on to what jesus says next this is verse 33 this is how they respond when jesus says what he does they answered him and you can kind of pick up on the agitation in their voice here we're offspring literally seed we're offspring or seed of abraham and we've never been slaves to anyone how is it that you say you will become free so what's this language about being free i mean in other words we don't need you to set
us free we don't need to know the truth and be set free because look there's no shackles on us there's no chains on us no on one level this is simply ludicrous because if you know anything about jewish history you know that the jews have been enslaved any number of times and in fact as they were saying these words to jesus they were then not free so quick run through of israelite history they were enslaved in egypt of course all the way back in the book of exodus god brought them out of egypt after 40
years they entered the promised land fast forward a few more centuries and then they were enslaved by assyria assyria comes through in 722 bc wipes out the northern kingdom takes the 10 northern tribes into exile they never return then about a century and a half later 586 bc we have the babylonians coming through under nebuchadnezzar and they wipe out jerusalem they destroy the temple they take the people of the southern kingdom into exile they're in babylon as slaves in exile fast forward a few decades the persians take over now the persians are their overlords they're
nicer than the babylonians they let the jews return to jerusalem and rebuild the temple and rebuild the walls under nehemiah but the jews are still slaves i mean they're still subject to the persians well then along comes the greeks and alexander the great and the greeks are now their overlords and that continues for a while until you have the romans coming in in the first century bc and the romans now become the overlords of the israelites so we've never been enslaved to anyone ludicrous of course you have time after time after time after time now
maybe they meant that we've never been enslaved spiritually well that too is false because as jesus will go on to say in just a minute he who is a practitioner of sin is a slave to sin so whether they meant politically historically or whether they were talking individually about themselves either way completely wrong they were in fact shackled and they didn't even know it now one of the things to point out here they say we're the seed of abraham we've never been enslaved to anyone why hearken back to abraham why talk about him in particular
well because of course abraham was the father of the israelite nation and so people trace their origin back to him however even in the old testament like in the prophet jeremiah we have evidence that just because you were descended from abraham was by no means a guarantee that you were a true israelite so for instance in jeremiah chapter 9 verses 25-26 he says behold the days are coming declares the lord when i will punish all those who are uh who are circumcised merely in the flesh now notice the contrast he sets up here merely in
the flesh egypt judah edom and the sons of amen moab and all who dwell in the desert who cut the corners of their hair whatever that means for all these nations are uncircumcised and all the house of israel are get this language uncircumcised in heart so jeremiah's is saying you know just because outwardly you're circumcised doesn't mean that you're truly circumcised just because you're a descendant of abraham and are circumcised just like abraham received the covenant of circumcision that doesn't mean that you're circumcised in heart that doesn't mean that you're truly a son of abraham
now paul picks up this language in romans chapter 9 he says for not all who are descended from israel belong to israel and not all are children of abraham because they are his offspring but through isaac shall your offspring be named this means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of god but the children of the promise are counted as offspring so fiscal descent from abraham ain't enough not enough no salvation by citizenship no salvation by descent paul echoes this in romans chapter 2 and galatians chapter 3. in romans
2 he says but a jew is one inwardly and circumcision is a matter of the heart of course that's what jeremiah was saying by the spirit and not by the letter and then in galatians 3 he sets up the contrast between those who are the true sons of abraham and those who are not those who are of faith are blessed along with abraham the man of faith in other words if you are a believer it really doesn't matter if you are a jew or a gentile and it doesn't really matter if you're circumcised or not
physically if you are a believer you are a son or daughter of abraham that's it so those who trace their descent from abraham the true those who truly trust him from abraham don't point to their circumcision but don't point to their keeping of the law they point to the fact that they believe in the lord and it is reckoned to them as righteousness to use the language of genesis chapter 15. those who are of the faith of abraham are the children of abraham that's what it truly means to be descended from abraham and so when
those who were beginning to reject jesus and then who fully rejected him when they claimed to be the children of abraham they were deluded they were not the children of abraham because only those are children of abraham who don't trace it through some kind of some kind of family tree or pedigree or citizenship the true children of abraham are those who hold fast to the promise of the seed of the messiah they are the true children of abraham next section let's see how jesus responds to what they had to say this is verses 34-36 the
conclusion of this section jesus answered them truly truly i say to you everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin these words that are underlined by the way we're going to come back to in a second the slave does not remain in the house forever the sun remains forever so if the sun sets you free you will be free indeed this language of of truly truly this is in in greek and the greek it just basically borrowing from the hebrew is amen amen or in hebrew i mean this goes all the way back to
um the the old testament for instance in psalm 41 psalm 72 and psalm 89 these conclusions to the books of the psalms as you probably know the the psalm the book of psalms are divided into five different sections and the way these are concluded at least in three of them are by a doubling of the amen so amen amen and amen amen amen that's the way those three sections conclude this is then picked up by john and it's characteristic of john only of john's gospel to double the amen so the other gospel writers will have
one amen john doubles that so you have amen amen truly truly or verily verily or amen amen i say unto you this is a way of obviously of kind of reinforcing doubling down accenting strongly that which jesus is about to say so what does he mean by one who does sin or one who sins one who practices sin the greek phrase here is paso poyontein hamartian the one who is a doer of sin the one who's a practitioner of sin and in john's gospel and i think that's this is important to keep in mind in
john's gospel sin not always but sin very frequently is linked to unbelief so for instance in chapter 16 verses 8 9 jesus is talking about the holy spirit calls him the helper the paraclete when the helper comes he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment concerning sin because they do not believe in me so you see sin is not believing in jesus unbelief is sin and this sin this core unbelief this foundational unbelief then produces all sorts of sins but that is the fundamental sin is unbelief or in john 8 24 i
told you that you would die in your sins for unless you believe that i am he you will die in your sins so you see once more contrast that is set up either you believe or you are in your sin and therefore you do not believe so in john's gospel very frequently sin is the equivalent of unbelief and this unbelief gives rise to all sorts of individual sins now very often when we kind of think about the world and look at the people who are powerful the people have money the people have sex appeal the
people have political clout we frequently think about them as those who are truly free i mean they're free to just do whatever they want to do but this is the great irony because very often the people that others look up to want to be like emulate because of their power or sex appeal or because they have clout or whatever it might be very frequently i know there's exceptions but very frequently those are the people who are actually the slaves they're slaves because their life is characterized by unbelief and it doesn't matter how much power you
have it doesn't matter how much prestige how much influence you have if you're if your life is characterized by unbelief then you are a slave you are a slave to sin a slave to death a slave to the devil and this will then have ramifications for how you live and how you speak and everything everything about your life so it doesn't matter outwardly how seemingly liberated someone appears to be or how they act if unbelief characterizes who they are then they truly are the most abject of slaves so that's what jesus is talking about here
with being slaves and those who are characterized by unbelief being shackled being slaves to sin then he goes on the slave does not remain in the house forever the son remains forever so if the son set you free will be free indeed indeed now this gets back to that verb we looked at earlier meno abide or remaining so jesus is setting this picture before us so the slave is not going to minnow abide or remain continue in the house forever because that's not his real home he's a slave and so he can be put out
anytime he doesn't belong in the house he's not a child he's not a son he's a slave and so he can be kicked out any time he has no inheritance sun does menno the sun remains abides forever and then jesus says so if these son talk about himself if these sons set you free you will be free indeed meaning that if we're if we're characterized by unbelief if we're a slave then we have no inheritance we're not abiding in the house of god we we we don't belong there however if the son of the house
if the son of the father who has all authority if he frees us if he sets us free from our slavery to sin then by implication we too are part of the house we're part of god's house we're part of his family we receive his inheritance we abide in his house along with the son because to use the language we have elsewhere in scripture we are now the brothers and sisters of christ we're his friends we're part of the family that calls upon god as our father now i want to introduce you to if you're
not familiar with already introduce you to this beautiful paradox that kind of plays off of this that's this paradox by by martin luther which he wrote in the freedom of the christian he says a christian is perfectly free lord of all subject to none and then he says immediately after that a christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all subject to all now how can that be how can we be free perfectly free and lord of all and also perfectly subject to all well like this here's the way it works in christ we're free we're
saved free from sin we're set free from death we're set free from the devil we are completely liberated in jesus christ and what are we going to do with our liberty what are we going to do with our freedom well we're not as it were trying by our works all these things that we could do to build a ladder to heaven to put together our works and build this wooden ladder that leads up to heaven so we can sort of placate god there's no need of that in christ we're free we're fully adopted we're the
beloved children of the father so we are liberated but what are we going to do with our freedom what are we going to do with this liberty of ours well all those works that we would have used to try and placate god we're now going to give to our neighbor we are now the servant of all because we live in service for others we love them we take care of them we serve them and in this way we give to our neighbor the works that we would have given to god god doesn't need our works
our neighbor does so our works of love then flawed of us into others so we're perfectly free lords of all and how do we use our liberty well not for self-service we don't use our liberty for self-indulgence we don't use our liberty to do whatever we want instead we use our liberty as it was designed by god to be used we freely serve those around us and so we are lords and servants all together in christ pulling all this together jesus says if you're truly my disciples you will menno you will remain abide sit in
my word sit in my love sit in me and when we do this we're set free we're set free by the love of god in jesus christ and we're no longer slaves to sin those shackles have been broken by the cross and resurrection they're now gone in christ we are free and so what do we do with our freedom we love our neighbor we serve our spouse we serve our children we serve our neighbors our friends even our enemies we pray for those who persecute us so abiding in the word of christ that word has
its way with us and as a result this word then produces in us the fruits of the spirit which become acts of love toward the neighbor and if you wanted to kind of summarize in a nutshell what the reformation was all about it was that we are freely justified by the life death and resurrection of jesus christ so that we are saved solely by grace that grace that's given to us in jesus christ so that we no longer need to work to earn the favor of god so what do we do what do we do
with this freedom well in our vocations and our callings we let this love of god through the work of his spirit flow out of us as with our mouths and our hands and our feet we're going where god wants us to go we're serving with our hands those whom god has placed around us we're speaking words of love to them and we're also with these same mouths interceding to god the father on behalf of those that he has placed in our life i hope this has been helpful to you as you think about john chapter
8 and this dialogue that jesus has with his interlocutors and i pray that as you yourself live out your vocations that this might be of comfort and encouragement to you to know that god doesn't need your good works so with those good works serve those around you and while you're doing that sit with christ abide in him abide in his words but there is liberty and there is peace and there is the life that god has designed for each of us [Music]
