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!



[1] Warren Wiersbe, The Wiersbe Bible Commentary: The Complete New Testament in One Volume. p. 258.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

I Don't Find Jokes About Worship Music Very Funny

Should the Church Accommodate Its Worship to the Culture?

Embracing Conflict in the Church