JOHN 8:31-37 John Series: Get a Life in Jesus

Scott Turansky, Senior Pastor December 16, 2018 JOHN 8:31-37 John Series: Get a Life in Jesus [PRAYER] Heavenly Father, it s amazing to look at your plan. How the prophecies of the Old Testament all pointed to this Messiah that would come. And then we see so many prophecies fulfilled in the birth, the life, the death of Christ. That s just awesome. And thank you, Lord. We know that you care about each one of us, that you know about our own hearts and lives and that you re concerned about us, and that you love us and that you ve initiated with us so that we can respond and have a relationship with you. So thank you for that. Lord, in the midst of our week, sometimes it s challenging to keep that focus and that gratefulness inside of our hearts. So I m asking now that you ll give us the ability this week to focus in on you, to trust you in the midst of the everyday experiences that we have and the challenges that we face, to recognize that you are in control just as you demonstrated your control in history by giving us Jesus Christ. You are very concerned about our daily lives. So Father, give us the ability to trust you, to give up our own control of the situations around us. I suspect that there are people here today who are rather troubled because of things that are going on in our lives. So I m asking that you would bring a calm into their hearts. Bring a peace that they know comes from you and that they can appreciate because it does come from you. Lord, as we open your word, we do so with reverence, but we also do it with anticipation knowing that you re about to speak to us. So we ask you to speak in a way that changes us. Give each one of us what we need today as we open your word. In Jesus name, amen. I m excited about our passage in John 8 today because it s addressed to new believers. So it makes your ears perk up. If you re a new believer or someone exploring the faith, then I think you re going to want to listen to what Jesus has to say here. Because He s talking to new believers. I think you ll find that the message that s communicated is a valuable one for you, no matter what age you are, no matter where you are in your faith, what your faith history is. But what He has to say to these people in this story is actually remarkable. I guess it s really basic, but I would suggest we all need the basics sometimes, so that s what we re going to be looking at today in the passage. I want to read to you the section of scripture from John 8 where Jesus is dialoguing with these people. I want you to stand up with me as I read this passage just in honor of God s word. So if you would stand, I m going to read these verses from John 8:31-37. To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. Scott Turansky - Calvary Chapel Living Hope

They answered him, We are Abraham s descendants and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free? Jesus replied, Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. I know that you are Abraham s descendants. Yet you are looking for a way to kill me, because you have no room for my word. You may be seated. Notice that the passage starts by telling us who Jesus is talking to. He s talking to the people who believed. Now His public ministry has only been going on for a year or two, maybe two years at this point, so they are rather new believers. He wants them to know something really important about being a believer, a message that I want to encourage you to grasp today. Look at your own life and see if you need the piece of information that He s sharing today. If you re a young person, this can help you set a pattern in your life that will be really valuable. If you re an old person, this can help set a pattern in your life that will be really valuable. Good stuff going on right here. So He s talking to the people who had believed in him. We re all a different places in our spiritual lives. I too became a Christian when I was just a preschooler. When I was three years old I asked Jesus to come into my heart. I look at the three year olds now that I spend time with and I go, Wow, I sure didn t know much then. But I knew I wanted something that was offered to me at the time. I remember there was a children s leader or worker and our little preschool class that day was up in the choir loft of the small church that I was a part of. Somehow in the midst of that I guess I was asked the question, Do you want to ask Jesus to come into your life? So I just remembered the other people. I was with this one teacher, this lady, and I asked Jesus to come into my heart. Over the years, of course, my parents, who were believers, nurtured that in my own heart. I grew to love God s word as a preschooler, memorizing Bible verses and just learning more about the power of God s word. My parents nurtured that faith inside of me. I remember my dad would hold the Bible in his hand and he would say, Are you ready? I don t know if He s going to say something big or He s going to say something small, but He s about to speak to us. Wow. Even now when I turn on the Bible on my phone I have this sense of anticipation that God is going to speak to me. There s just So I m really interested in what Jesus has to say here to the new believers because I want you to hear what He says because it says that very thing that we all need. Let s backtrack here. Jesus was the one telling these people - Hey, come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. He s the one who s going to make these statements now. Let me read to you the next part of the verse. He says If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. Scott Turansky - Calvary Chapel Living Hope 2

Now notice the difference between believer and disciple. Two words that are present there. Believers are those that have trusted Jesus Christ or who believe what He says. The word disciple means a learner or a grower. Someone who s growing. Notice He says if you hold to my teaching. Now those words are pretty significant. If you hold to my teaching. The ESV says if you abide in my word. The Greek word is meno. It means to remain or to hang around. I want to show you another place where that same word meno is used in the New Testament by Jesus as He s teaching so you can get an idea. We ll take the word and how it s used, meno, in this other passage I m going to show you. We re going to bring the meaning so we understand it in this passage. Just so you get the picture of what Jesus is talking about. I want to take you to Mark 6:8-10 where Jesus is sending the disciples out on their first evangelistic trip. So He s sending them all out and He s giving these instructions to them. He says to them Take nothing for the journey except a staff no bread, no bag, no money in your belts. Wear sandals but not an extra shirt. Whenever you enter a house, (meno) stay there until you leave that town. You don t have to hop around from place to place. If someone welcomes you in, just stay there in that place. Remain there. Hang out here. I m sure Jesus didn t use those words hang out, but that s the idea here. Hang out with God s word. That s what He s saying. Hold on to my teaching. Hang on to, hold on to, hang out with the Bible. Hang out with the Bible. Hang out with the scripture. He s talking about the teachings. Of course we have those teachings written down in our Bible. So holding on to the Bible and those teachings becomes this thing that marks the person who is really a disciple as someone who is hanging out with the Bible. Let me encourage you to ask yourself the question, how many times this week did you open the Bible or did you have the devotional come on your phone or did you read something about God s word? The idea here is let s all hang out with the Bible. Because hanging out with the Bible is what produces this something inside of us. I m going to call it spiritual strength for a moment, but let me illustrate what I mean by that. So here I am right here and I live in a broken world and I am broken myself. We are all that way. I m not the only one that s broken. I think some of you might identify with that. There s a brokenness inside of me. So we live in a broken world and in this brokenness, even inside of us, we have a hard time living life sometimes. Right? I mean we ve got this challenge and that challenge and we re going oh man, we re feeling overwhelmed. God provides for us strength, spiritual strength He calls grace, and that strength comes through different forms. One of the forms that it comes through is by coming to church like this. That s one of the reasons you re here. Because there s some spiritual strength that comes to you via the being here gathered with other Christians, and you go away feeling a little stronger spiritually. Right? We package our worship service in a way that combines several different things together so there s a fellowship time that we can enjoy. That s one of the things that provides this spiritual strength. There s worship. As we come before the Lord that does something to you and to me and provides this grace, this worship experience, gives us a little more spiritual strength. We pray Scott Turansky - Calvary Chapel Living Hope 3

together. And even in my prayers, I m trying to model for you prayers that you can be praying, and I want to encourage your prayer life. So we pray together in that regard and we look at God s word. Those are just a few things. There are other things that we do. There are things like we serve. You know when you serve the Lord, there s something it does to you. It strengthens you. When you give, it strengthens you. There s something, you go ah, I m contributing to this. There s something that happens. All of those are forms of strength that God provides to you and me. They re grace. They re coming to us in our lives so that we, as we stand in this broken world with brokenness inside of us, we can handle it, we can manage it, and we can be victorious in that. So I just want to say for a moment, if you re just trying to live life in the human element and trying to pull yourself up by the bootstraps and be all you can be kind of a person, if you re doing it on your own, you re missing something really important and that is the grace of God that He provides for us in a number of different ways. We are a discipleship church. What that means is we re trying to help people grow in their faith. That s simply what it means. So we re providing opportunities for all these things to take place. But the most important thing you want to know about growing and being strong in your faith is to read the word, read your Bible, read the book. Understand what the Bible says. Maybe you look at some parts of the Bible and it s boring or you don t get it. I m going to tell you, I look at some parts of the Bible and it s boring to me too! Okay? I understand that. But every part of the Bible, some of it you have to dig into more than others, but there s plenty of places in the Bible you could open up and read and you understand it and it makes sense and you get it, and good things are going on. You go, Wow. I needed that verse today. Have you ever experienced that? A verse comes on, I needed that verse. That s the spiritual strength that God provides from His word that He wants us to experience regularly. I know you get spiritual strength from a number of different godly sources. Grace comes to your life. But please don t substitute service for God for His word. Don t substitute coming to church for His word in your life. Every one of us needs to read the book. We need to come before God, read the Bible, and try to understand what is He saying in the midst of this? Now the biggest enemy of reading the book is that we say to ourselves, I m okay. I don t need this. Right? I ve got it handled today. You know if you re really needy, you re likely to pull out your Bible or spend some time praying. That s another way that we receive this grace from God is by praying. But if you re hurting and you re feeling the pain, then you re likely to open up a Bible and look at it for some comfort and some strength because you need it. But if you re not hurting at the moment, you may have a tendency to say, I m okay. That s what the Jews do. Let s look at the passage and see how they respond. Let s look at verse 32. Jesus says Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. Jesus is describing this spiritual strength that you get from holding onto His teaching, His freedom. This freedom from guilt, this freedom from being encumbered by life. So if you hold on to the teaching, you can experience the freedom. That s the idea that He s saying here. And you know, you ve heard this. You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. You don t have to read the Bible to know that, right? All the time we hear that in our culture. You ll know Scott Turansky - Calvary Chapel Living Hope 4

the truth, and the truth will set you free. You ve just got to know that it s taken out of context when someone says that to you outside of the Bible. Just look at what the Bible says. What truth is He referring to? He s referring to holding onto my teaching. The word of God produces truth, the truth comes into our lives, and the truth sets us free. That s what the real meaning of that verse is. You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free isn t about discovering new information. It s about knowing God s truth and what it does to each one of us personally. Well, the Jews, how did they respond to that? They respond to him, We are Abraham s descendants and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free? In other words, we ve got it together. We don t really need the freedom. We re already free people. I think one of our enemies is the things we don t know. We don t know what we don t know, so there s parts, there s things that God wants to do that are outside even of our imagination that He wants to gives us and bless us with. That s why we need this continual input from God s word. These guys are saying, Hey, we re free already. Jesus is looking at them. You guys are free? I ve got to tell you about something completely different because you don t understand what freedom is all about. I would suggest we don t know what success is really all about if we re just looking at the bank account or the job. That there s something much bigger that Jesus is trying to offer them. So notice His reply to them. He says Very truly I tell you Those are the words amén amén. We get our word amen from that. Amen. Truly, truly is what He s saying. Truly, truly I tell to you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. Kind of like the other statement about knowing the truth and the truth will set you free. He says if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. See the reality is each one of us is broken. We stand in life trying to deal with the challenges we face. Those challenges are pretty great at times and can be overwhelming, difficult to deal with. Especially in this area of sin. Let s just talk about the sin that we have is when we have messed up in life. And sometimes it s we live in a broken world and it s the sins of other people that have messed with us. Some of you have been hurt deeply by other people and their sins. Sin is a very weighty thing. Jesus is saying there s some freedom that you can have in your life, and it comes from the Son. If you ve never accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, then this passage is offering you something. It s saying that guilt that makes life hard for you and makes it challenging is something that Christ takes care of. It's something that God wants to free you from. So He wants you to enjoy something really special in your life. It s a freedom that you can have today. Jesus wants to communicate that message to them that if you have the Son then you are free indeed. So if you re just gathering information today, you re kind of interested in the faith, the Lord brought you here for a purpose is to hear a message that it s your relationship with God that is the most important thing and the Son offers you something really special. Scott Turansky - Calvary Chapel Living Hope 5

Hold on to my teaching, He says. The power of the truth in our lives. Let s call some witnesses besides Jesus here for a moment and look at them and see how they say something similar in other places of the Bible. David. You know David. He wrote a lot of the psalms. He s the one who killed Goliath. He s the one who was the king of Israel. He is the one who sinned with Bathsheba. He s the one who had some family issues. His son rebelled and it was very heartbreaking, as I m sure some of you are very aware. And David writes in one his songs in Psalm 1 Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers. In other words he s the one who kind of checks the influences he has. Let s just pause for a moment. What influences are you hanging around with? Both physical people and electronic. Because they influence you. So one of the success principles here that he s laying out right at the beginning is be careful of the influences. So this blessed person, blessed is the one, checks the influences. But then the word but is there in verse 2. He says But his delight is in the law of the Lord. This person delights to be with God s word. And he meditates on his law day and night. Oh now He gives us a little more practical part of this for us. Day and night. When you get up in the morning or some time in the morning you can read something in the Bible. When you go to bed at night, before you go to sleep you can read something in God s word. Because it s going to change your beliefs. It s going to change how you think. It s going to produce something inside of you. It s God s strength coming into your life. It s going to do something for you, as He describes in the next verse. That person is going to be like a tree planted by streams of water. Not a wilted flower, which is how we feel sometimes, but a tree, a blossoming, thriving tree planted by streams of water, which yields is fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever they do prospers. Remember we talked about this brokenness that we experience and God produces and provides His grace or spiritual strength to encourage us. I want you to know, He doesn t just do that so we can be happy. Certainly blessed. It means happy. Not just so we can be happy or so we can look at ourselves in the mirror and see our spiritual muscles. He doesn t do that. He does that so we can care about others, so we can produce fruit. That fruit is something so that we can bless other people. Our purpose in life isn t just to manage ourselves, although we get stuck there many times. Don t we? We get stuck managing ourselves because we live in a broken world and things are hard in our world and we need strength. God provides that strength so that we can be like a flourishing tree or, as Jesus says, we can be free. What s the common denominator here? We re in love with the Bible. We re in love with the teaching that God provides. We read the book. We have a privilege in our society today that we have electronics. So electronics can even help you with this. I mean you can get on a list where you re sent an email every morning that has a scripture and devotion in it. I encourage you to find those and get involved in them. You can look at the Bible on your phone. I have it on my phone. You can just open it up and look at a verse there before you go to bed at night. Meditate on his law day and night. Witness number Scott Turansky - Calvary Chapel Living Hope 6

one, David. Obviously a challenged guy and lot of things going on. Yet he was focusing on the spiritual strength that comes from God s word. Witness number two, Joshua. Now Joshua s got a new job and the new job is going to be a very challenging one. If you feel the pressure in the new job, you re trying to make sure you can do it well. So God comes to Joshua and gives him some advice about how to handle his new job. So He says Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go. Now Jesus used the word free. David used the word this blossoming tree. This is the word success that God is using with Joshua. I think to define success in a little different terms than we often define it. Right? Successful wherever you go. Verse 8. Here s His instructions to him. Keep this Book of the Law always on your lips; meditate on it day and night. Isn t that interesting. Same words that we saw with David. Now God is saying to Joshua, you got this new job. You want to be careful how you lead the people here. You want to do this in a way that s centered around God and His word because that s going to provide you the strength to do the job that you want to do. Some of you wish you had a job. Maybe you don t have a job right now. You wish you had a job. I just want to tell you, it s the same thing. Meditate on God s word day and night so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful. Two words. We like those words. Prosperous and successful. But notice they re tied into this read the book. I just think if we spend more time reading the book, good things can happen. We ve just got to get it open. We ve got to read it. I just want to encourage you to think about those things, reading the book today. Let me tell you another story, a story about Lynn Wilder. Lynn Wilder was a professor at Brigham Young University. This is the Mormon university. Thirty years she was a professor there and she raised her children with Mormonism. One of the good things about Mormonism is they re very mission-minded. So their young people when they get to be teenagers they send them on mission trips to Mormon places where they can serve and so on. I think it s a great idea. We ought to be doing more about that with that kind of a thing even in our own church. But her youngest son, Micah, when he went on the mission trip he met a Christian. As they were dialoguing, the Christian said, Just read the New Testament. Just read it. So he did. He picked up the New Testament and he read the New Testament and he was surprised. He was surprised that the New Testament as he read it was different than what the Mormons were telling him what the New Testament was all about. Now he s reading it and he s saying wow, this is really interesting to understand. He read the New Testament three times. He became a Christian, converted from Mormonism to Christianity because he realized that some of the things that were taught by the Mormon church were not accurate according to God s word. That salvation doesn t come by doing good works, it comes by faith in Jesus Christ. That s different. This Jesus Christ, this is who He is. Because the Mormon teaches some different things about Jesus. Here s who He is in the New Testament. He was so surprised, he became a Christian. Scott Turansky - Calvary Chapel Living Hope 7

And then he told his mom. Who is a professor at Brigham Young University. For thirty years she taught Mormonism. She raised her family that way. Of course you can imagine the dialogue. She argues with him and he says, Mom. Just read the book. That s what he said. Just read the book. She wanted to argue with him about the thing. Mom. Just read the book. So she read the New Testament. And when she read the New Testament, she realized there was truth there that she was missing and she also became a Christian. There s a book written called Unveiled Grace written by Lynn Wilder. You d enjoy the book. It's a story of her family converting from Mormonism to Christianity because they found the truth. Certainly if you know someone who s Mormon or you re trying to witness to a Mormon, you ll see all kinds of resources there that would help you. But it s a fascinating story. What helped her understand that Christianity was real? Read the book. If we can do that, then we will be disciples. We will move from just being believers to disciples. That s what we want. We want to be disciples where we re growing and we re receiving this grace. Not just so we can keep it for ourselves, but so we can share it with other people. Read the book. Let s go back to our passage. Verse 37 I know that you are Abraham s descendants. Yet you (that s you plural, you is Jewish people) are looking for a way to kill me, because you have no room for my word. Well that s a rebuke. I don t want to be there where I don t have room for God s word. Because when you don t have room for God s word, your mind starts going in places where it shouldn t be going. Your actions start going in places they shouldn t be going. Because there s no room for the word. We re broken people. We need the strength that God provides so that we can grow, so that we can help other people who are broken. I just want you to know, you probably already know this, there are broken people all around you. You rub shoulders with broken people every day I m sure. Some of them you don t know that they re broken because they hide it pretty well. But we live in a broken world. Let me tell you a story. Carrie and I went on vacation a couple weeks ago for a week in Lancaster to celebrate forty years of being married. So we ve been married forty years. I should hear applause please. Yes thank you, thank you. Alright. So we went to Lancaster and we went to see the JESUS play. If you ever get to see it, it s great. It s playing until I think March. So if you can go see it at Sight & Sound, the JESUS play, it's great. Then another day we went shopping, early shopping for Christmas presents. We went to the big outlet mall. So we re walking around. We re almost to the end of our shopping and we go into the outlet mall that s all about kitchen stuff. It s a whole store about kitchen stuff. Anything you ever want to buy is in this big store about kitchens. So Carrie and I are walking into the store and we re walking over to the aisle to start our shopping. The lady who works there, a middle-aged woman, comes up and she says, Is there anything I can help you with? I said, Yes. We need marriage counseling. Scott Turansky - Calvary Chapel Living Hope 8

My wife, feeling embarrassed says, He s just kidding. The woman says, Well all I can do is pray for you anyway, to which both of us said, Oh that would be great. We can use all the prayer we can get! And she says, How long have you been married? We said forty years. And she starts to cry. She doesn t know us. She doesn t know me as a pastor. She knows me as a shopper. A shopper who says we ll take your prayers. She starts to cry and she tells us her story about how her husband left her and she s got kids and she s a believer. We told her we would pray for her. It just reminds us that there are people all around us that are broken, that are hurting. You don t even get to know that about most people. But if you re there saying to someone, Hey, have a blessed day, you never know what kind of opening that s going to be. Or you say to someone, Can I pray for you? And they go, Oh yes. God gives us His strength so that we can be people who are whole, who are free, who are prosperous, successful. Don t take that the wrong way. In God s way this prosperous, this sense of wholeness inside of us. God helps us to do that. How? Why? Because there s a hurting, broken world out here. Where does this all start? It goes back to one statement and I want to leave you with this statement today. I hope the Lord will take this statement and use it in your life. Read the book. Let s stand and let s pray together. [PRAYER] Lord, we thank you for the godly people through those years who were writing down the words that you gave to them so that we have your inspired word for us. We thank you that the scriptures are alive, that we can take and apply to our lives in this day and age. Not just a historical study, but something that we can use, that you use to provide spiritual strength for us. So give us a love for your word, that we would delight in your word and meditate on it day and night. Lord, I pray for my brothers and sisters here that you would give them such a love or even just the discipline to do that and that you would bless. You reveal supernatural things, insights into things that come from your grace and from your word. Thank you for the power that your word has to change us. In Jesus name, amen. Scott Turansky - Calvary Chapel Living Hope 9