Free Indeed!
Christ the
King Sunday
November
26, 2017
John
8:31-36
You’re Gonna Have to Serve Somebody
We’ve just finished celebrating
Thanksgiving, a wonderful national holiday.
While we are deeply troubled as a people, we still have much to be
thankful for. We are known as the “Home
of the Brave and the Free.” Our nation
and our government were founded on the principles of freedom.
In some ways, it’s a pipe dream. No
one is truly free. We all serve some
thing or someone.
In the late 70’s, Bob Dylan had a
Christian conversion experience and his change in perspective began to show up
in his music – which, of course, some people absolutely hated. Evangelical Christians, on the other hand,
were thrilled and wanted to pull him into the booming contemporary Christian
music marketplace. Thankfully, Dylan
resisted. He’s never been anyone’s
commodity.
Of the songs that he wrote during
this period in the early 80’s, my favorite has always been “You’re Gonna Have
to Serve Somebody” because of its plain and simple message and its blues-rock
groove. Here are some of the lyrics:
You may be
an ambassador to England or France
You may
like to gamble, you might like to dance
You may be
the heavyweight champion of the world
You may be
a socialite with a long string of pearls
But you’re
gonna have to serve somebody…
You might
be a rock 'n' roll addict prancing on the stage
You might
have drugs at your command, women in a cage
You may be
a business man or some high-degree thief
They may
call you doctor or they may call you chief
But you're
gonna have to serve somebody, yes you are
You may be
a construction worker working on a home
You may be
living in a mansion or you might live in a dome
You might
own guns and you might even own tanks
You might
be somebody's landlord, you might even own banks
But you're
gonna have to serve somebody, yes, indeed
You're
gonna have to serve somebody…
Here’s a clip from the last part of
his performance at the 1980’s Grammy Awards:
(I’ve always wanted to include Bob
Dylan in a sermon.) The mantra that
Dylan sang, as much as we might want to resist it, is absolutely true.
Text: John 8:31-36 (p. 1663)
… Jesus said [to the Jews who
believed him], “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then
you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
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.
Enslaved to Sin
We don’t like the word, slave.
The institution of slavery is abhorrent to us because it is deeply
dehumanizing. Slavery invalidates the
free will of the individual person. As a
slave, you have no will but your master’s.
Slavery was a pervasive reality in
the first century Roman world. It was
somewhat different than what we know from America’s past.. Slavery in the Roman world existed on many
different levels. Those who were sent to
serve in the mines or entertain as gladiators were given a death sentence. Agricultural slaves expected only a lifetime
of back-breaking labor. Household slaves
might expect somewhat better treatment, but women and sometimes boys were
subject to horrendous sexual abuse. Any
slave in any situation might be executed at the whim of his or her master. Some slaves in the ancient world, however,
had the opportunity to earn money and some purchased their own freedom. Later on, as the church became more
established, some congregations were able to purchase the freedom of some slaves.
But while
you were a slave, your life was not your own.
You had no
freedom to choose anything.
Jesus told his followers that if
they kept his teachings they would be his disciples. And, as his disciples, they would know the
truth and the truth would set them free.
John’s text is a bit confusing at verse 33 because it seems that those
who believed Jesus as his disciples were giving him pushback. I don’t think that’s the case. The ones who reacted against his remark about
being set free were the Pharisees who were opposing him earlier in the text in
verse 13. And in their self-righteous
anger, they didn’t even get their own national history right! How could they forget 400 years of slavery in
Egypt? Their growing opposition and
hatred toward Jesus was clouding their thinking.
Jesus explained that everyone who
habitually keeps on sinning (that is full sense of the literal verb) is a slave
to sin. If sin is the pattern of your
life, you’re not really making the choices.
Your urges and temptations are controlling you. You are a slave. A slave to sin.
“Now wait a minute, Pastor Bob,”
you might be saying. “You keep using
this word, “sin,” and it is really uncool.
I mean, I know I’ve got my hang-ups, my dysfunctions, and my problems. But “sin” is so passé, so religious.”
In our post-modern, American
culture, we prefer to use inoffensive terms like dysfunction, addiction, and so
on. They can be helpful words in
understanding human behavior. “Sin,” however, is the word that God uses to
describe our core problem. But we avoid
the word “sin” because we don’t want to be accountable to God. And, of course, our desire to be separated
and nonaccountable to God is the root issue.
“Sin” literally means to “miss the mark.” That definition, of course, begs the
question, “What mark?” The most obvious
meaning is the moral perfection of God himself.
We’ll never measure up. We all
know that we are not perfect. The
Scripture, itself, declares, “There is no one who does good, not even one”
(Psalm 14:3). But I believe there is
also more to it than missing the mark of perfect righteousness. We are made in God’s image to reflect His
character. Sin is that which distorts
God’s image in us. God is light. Sin is darkness. God is good.
Sin is evil. God gives life. The outcome of sin is death. “Sin” is a the right word to use because it
identifies the root of all the ills that trouble mankind.
A couple of weeks ago, I clicked on
a small window on my Mac that told me I needed to update my Adobe flash video
application. I’ve seen the prompting
window before and ignored it. For some
reason, this time, I clicked on it. Big
mistake. I uploaded a virus that kept
taking me to a malicious website. And
not only did it infect my Mac at home, but because I use the same browser for
my laptop at the office, it infected it as well. There is malware that is much worse than what
I had. But, in my case, it was
constantly bringing up annoying advertisement windows on my browser and it
hijacked my homepage. Doing some
research on the malware, I discovered that is can take over your browser and
send you to other malicious webpages. Fortunately,
I was finally able to remove the offending program and free my devices from the
malicious will and intent of the computer virus.
Sin is like a computer virus. It takes over. You no longer have control. And the longer you keep sinning, the deeper
your problems become until you become so infected that you no longer function
as the human being that you were designed to be. That is the destructive power of sin. And, according to the Scriptures, we’ve all
been infected. We are all slaves to
sin.
Christ Defeated the Power of Sin Through His Death
But sin not only infected you and
me, it enslaved the whole cosmos. When
Adam and Eve first separated themselves and rebelled against God, their sin cursed
God’s good Creation and unleashed the evil intentions and plans of Satan. That’s why there are earthquakes and
hurricanes. Our choice to separate
ourselves from God in rebellion is what brought sickness, disease, and death
upon us. Sin is not just a personal
problem that you and I share. Sin is a cosmic problem that required a cosmic
solution.
Jesus is God in the flesh. He is God’s very Word in an earth-suit. The Bible calls him “the Second Adam,” as it
was his destiny to undo the curse that Adam’s sin brought upon the whole
world. Having lived the perfect life
that was supposed to be the destiny of the First Adam and all of humanity,
Jesus took on the curse and all the powers of Evil at the cross. When Jesus stretched out his arms on the
tree, he took upon himself all of the evil and the curse of this world – both
in the past and in the future. When
Jesus cried, “It is finished!” Satan and his all his dark angels hooted that
they had killed God’s Messiah. And if
Jesus had stayed in the ground, they would have been right.
But he
didn’t.
It is the Resurrection that insures
the victory that Jesus won at the cross.
The bondage of sin had finally been broken. The software that could cleanse the operating
system of all human beings had finally been released. Freedom from the slavery of sin could finally
be had through faith in Jesus Christ.
And whom Jesus has set free is free indeed!
Live Out Your Baptism
So how do we become freed from the
slavery of sin? How can we take this
Good News and make it more than just talk in our lives? How can we make it real?
In verse 35, Jesus gives us the
first and most important clue. “Now a
slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever.” The difference between spiritual freedom and
bondage is whether or not one is a son or a slave.[1] The first question for you is whether or not
you are son of God. (And the specific
gender term here is important because in biblical times, it was only sons who
would receive an inheritance. But the
New Testament also makes it clear that both men and women can be sons of God in
this sense.) The Bible says, “as many as
received [Jesus], to them [God] gave the right to become sons of God” (John
1:12). Have you received Christ? Do you believe that he is God in the flesh,
who died and rose again to defeat the power of sin and death?
Second, do you follow and observe
God’s word? Obedience is the sign of
true faith. You may call yourself a
Christian or a son of God, but if you don’t obey his word, your faith is
worthless. Not my words. Scripture’s words (James 2:17). Look back at
our text: ““If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you
will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (vs. 21-32). Hold to Jesus’ teaching. That simply means to do what Jesus said to
do. And here’s the profound logical
outcome: In your experience of following
Jesus, the light will come on, you will know the truth, and that truth will set
you free from the enslaving power of sin!
It’s the biblical pattern of discipleship and spiritual growth:
· The more we
know God, the more we love him.
· The more we
love him, the more we obey him.
· The more we
obey him, the more he reveals himself to us.
Jesus’ commands are not burdensome
(I John 5:3). Following Jesus in
obedience is what frees us from the oppressive power of sin.
Finally, live out the truth of your
baptism. I mentioned this a couple of
weeks ago. You can find the teaching in
Paul’s epistle to the Romans, in the sixth chapter. It bears repeating:
What shall
we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means!
We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don’t
you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into
his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in
order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the
Father, we too may live a new life.
For if we
have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united
with him in a resurrection like his. For we know that our old self was
crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that
we should no longer be slaves to sin— because anyone who has died has been set
free from sin.
Now if we
died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. For we know that
since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has
mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life
he lives, he lives to God.
In the same
way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
Romans 6:1-11
In baptism, we have both died to
sin and risen with Christ in newness of life.
Paul states this plainly. I will
readily admit that this is very hard to grasp.
I’ve spent most of my adult life trying to understand and live this
truth. Friends, we have to recognize
that there is a tension between a literal historical event – our death and
resurrection with Christ, our current experience in our struggle with sin, and
the future where we will reign with Christ.
Oftentimes, when something is stated in Scripture, it is without the
restraints of time that we experience. Here,
Paul conveys the truth of our death and resurrection with Christ as a
historical, current, and future reality in one all-encompassing statement. It is left to us to work out the tension in
our current experience.
Making the historical event our
current reality begins with acknowledging our victory over sin by faith. That is our foundation and it is very
important. You don’t have to sin! You are no longer a slave! Walk – step by step – in your newness of life
in Christ. That means that as you follow
Jesus and obey his word, the historical reality of your death and resurrection
with Christ will become more and more – step by step – your present
experience.
Sixty-two years ago, I was born
into my family as a Myers and a Davis (my mother’s family or origin). That is a historical fact and I have the
birth certificate to prove it. But, as a
little infant, I didn’t really manifest too many of the characteristics of the
joining of the two families. But as I’ve
gotten older I’ve begun to make the historical reality more and more of my
present experience. You know. As you get older, you find yourself aghast as
you realize you’re becoming your father…or mother, depending on your
gender. I’ve got other characteristics,
too. My hairline is becoming more like
my maternal grandfather’s. My growing
interest in boats is a manifestation of my Myers Long Island roots. You get the idea. Step by step, I’m fulfilling the truth that
was documented on my birth certificate.
It’s true for you as well.
That may be an imperfect analogy,
but that is what I’m trying to convey when I encourage you to live out your
baptism. The historical truth that was
proclaimed in your baptism – that you have died and risen with Christ – is
becoming more and more your experience as you follow and obey Jesus. Remember your baptism. Live in its truth. Because sin is no longer your master!
But Bob Dylan is right. You’re still gonna have to serve
somebody. Earlier this morning we read
the rest of Romans 6. We have been freed
from the slavery to sin to become slaves of righteousness. Slavery was pervasive in the world in which
the New Testament was written. The New
Testament writers used the term frequently to describe themselves. Our modern translations have avoided the use
of the word “slave” because of its negative connotations and, instead, have
used words such as “servant” or “bondservant.”
But the Greek word in those cases is always doulos and its most literal translation is always “slave.” Most of the writers of the New Testament
gladly referred to themselves as “slaves of Christ” and their readers knew
exactly what they meant. They no longer
lived for their own purposes or to do their own will. They lived solely to please Christ.
When we live to please Christ, we
are no longer slaves to our own evil passions and desires that make us
miserable. We are not imprisoned by our
uncontrollable appetites and addictions.
We are not made miserable with our hatred and jealousy of others and our
greed for more material things and status.
No. As slaves of Christ, we are free to experience the fullness of life
that God, all along, has intended for us to have. We are free, indeed!
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