FREED | Lies

we are going to be in John chapter 8 verse 31 through 47. We're reading from the NIV, but whatever translation you have is fine. So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in 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." They answered Him, "We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say you will become free?" Jesus answered them, "Truly, truly I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever. The son remains forever. So if the son sets you free, you will be free indeed. I know that you are offspring of Abraham, yet you seek to kill me because my word finds no place in you. I speak of what I have seen with my Father, and you do what you have heard from your Father." They answered Him, "Abraham is our Father." Jesus said to them, "If you were Abraham's children, you would be doing the works Abraham did. But you now seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I have heard from God. This is not what Abraham did. You are doing the works of your father did. They said to him, "We were not born of sexual immorality. We have one Father, even God." Jesus said to them, "If God were your Father, you would love me. For I came from God, and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but he sent me. Why do you not understand what I say?

It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. You are of your Father, the devil. And your will is to do your Father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the Father of lies. But because I tell you the truth, you do not believe me. Which one of you can fix me of sin? If I tell you the truth, why do you not believe me? Whoever is of God, here is the word of God. The reason why you do not hear them is because you are not of God. This is the word of the Lord. Church of the City, how are you guys doing? Good. Great to be with you guys downtown. Let's get into it. My name is Tim. I serve as one of the executive pastors here. And it's just an honor to be with everyone this evening. I want to start with a confession. Last week, Pastor Sam preached on sin in confession and I was out. And so I figured I would just continue forward in the sermon series and lead off with a confession. And this is what it is. I spend way too much time on Christian YouTube this week. Now there's a difference between the regular YouTube and the Christian YouTube. And my algorithm is giving me the Christian YouTube. And it served me this week a reel from a Christian content creator walking through his morning routine.

And I just want to read it to you. This is fascinating. 4.47 a.m. Wake up. No phone for the first hour. 4.50 a.m. cold plunge while listening to the audio Bible. King James Version. 5.10 hot coffee. 20 minutes of silent contemplative prayer. 5.30 worship playlist. Speaking in tongues optional. Prayer journal leather bound to break away from the technology. 6 a.m. memorized two to three verses Greek if you're feeling it. 6.30 high protein breakfast. Lectio Divina with the kids. 7 a.m. crushed the inbox but only after first rebuking a spirit of distraction. Not bad. Not bad overall. Now I want you to know I'm not making fun of that man. I believe he sincerely loves Jesus. I'm very pro spiritual disciplines. I've got a morning routine myself. I'm just pointing this out for the rest of us who have watched 14 of those reels. And somewhere along the way have concluded that the reason we don't feel close to God is we haven't optimized our spiritual lives hard enough. I'll just go first. I'm in seminary right now. And so I've been listening to my theology textbooks at 1.6 feet. I don't have time to slow down so this is the way to get through seminary. And a few weeks ago I listened to a book on Sabbath at 1.6 feet. Crushed it.

I am now an expert on has done this to all of us. We have all built an idea in our mind that freedom is on the other side of the next system. It could be the next routine, the next therapist, the next workout, the next apartment, the next relationship. And if we're not careful, that can spill over into our spiritual lives and we can start to fall into the trap that Jesus is on the next side of the system too. If I just can get to the next Bible reading streak or if I can go to the next conference or read the book, if I can get a new journal and reconstruct my routine, then I'll be right with God. Then I'll be free. And what I just want to suggest to you guys this evening is the reason why you don't feel free isn't that you haven't optimized your walk with Jesus harden. The reason you don't feel free is that there is a lie beneath the surface of your life that no amount of optimization is ever going to touch. You can run from it, you can manage it, you can build a system around it, but you can't get free from it because the lie is still at work alive and well beneath the surface. And until the lie gets replaced, the sin patterns, all the problems in our lives that we all face, they don't go anywhere. We can hide it but we can't get free from it. And what we're about to see is that in John chapter 8, this is exactly what Jesus came to provide the solution to. And so just to introduce this and set this up, we're continuing forward in a sermon series called Freed where we're looking at all the things that hold us captive as people, as followers of Jesus and the freedom that Jesus promised to bring. It's rooted in the passage Galatians 5 where Jesus says, "It is for freedom that Christ has set you free." And that is a promise that He makes to all of us. And so the topic of today's talk in John chapter 8 is going to be freedom from lies. Let me just set the context before we get in. This takes place at what was called the Feast of Tabernacles, easily one of the biggest religious festivals of the year. Jerusalem is packed. People are coming in from all across the empire and they're gathering in the temple courts, they're flooding the city. And Jesus has been teaching these people all week long. And as He's teaching, the tension is just starting to rise. At this point, He's already declared "I am the light of the world." He's already defended a woman caught in adultery from a crowd that wanted to stone her. He's had this back and forth with all the religious leaders, the Pharisees, all chapter long, and they've already tried to arrest Him once. And at the

end of the chapter, those people pick up stones to try and kill Jesus. So what you have to understand is this isn't Jesus doing Lectio Divina with a few of his disciples on a mountaintop. This is Jesus in the middle of a fight. And we pick up in verse 30. This is the end of the previous section, so it closes with this. As He was saying these things, many believed in Him. Now, the first thing I want you to notice is who Jesus is talking to. Jesus is not talking to His enemies in this passage. He's not talking to the Pharisees who hate Him. He is talking to people who just said yes. Brand new believers, people who 30 seconds ago made a profession of faith. And look at the very next thing He says to them in verse 31. 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, do you see what Jesus just did there? Jesus' first move with the new believers is to test the sincerity of their belief. He doesn't say welcome to the family. He doesn't throw a big party. He says, "If you abide, if, then, you are truly my disciples." Now, I want you guys to see something because this is going to matter for the rest of the sermon. There are two different ways, two distinct ways that the word "believe" gets used in these two verses. And the first is verse 30. This is the close of the previous section. It says, "Many believed in Him." That's deep belief. That's all in belief. The kind of belief that changes you, that you give your whole life to. And then verse 31 opens the next section and it says to the Jews who had believed Him. Believe him is just mental agreement. It's, I think what you said is true. This is what we talked about a few weeks ago of knowing about God, but not truly knowing God. Same English word to completely different meanings. I just wanna ask, we're just getting warmed up this evening. Do you believe Jesus, believe his teaching, believe his words, believe his moral framework, believe in the religion that has formed itself around him as its leader? Or do you believe in Jesus, remaining in him

and relying on him and trusting in him and depending on him as you're all in all? Because the truth is, is that you can believe Jesus without believing in him. You can think his words are true without ever letting his words change you. And the test that we see in this passage to know which one of the two camps you're in is whether you'll let his words stay in you when his word starts to confront you. And that's exactly what we're about to see here. So tonight, sermon, I just have three points I wanna lead us through. Number one, I wanna talk about the lie beneath the sin. Number two, I wanna talk about the truth that replaces the lie. And then three, we'll get to the good stuff, the freedom that comes on the other side. Sound good? Okay, let's go in. I was in a hotel in Arizona last week, visiting my brother with my wife and our little baby. And I'm bored in the hotel room and so I open up the drawer next to the bed. And when I look inside the drawer, I see a book that I think is legally required to be in every single hotel drawer in America. It says the holy Bible on the front. King James version, the Gideon's. And I pick it up and I look at it.

And for some reason, this question just hit me that I'd never asked before, which is, why is it called holy? You know, like, you ever thought about that? Well, why do they call it the holy Bible? Because if you actually read the Bible and you study it, you will not find a book with more deceit, more war, more murder, more adultery, more betrayal, more corruption, more brokenness and human failure than the Bible. Doesn't seem all that holy to me. So why is it called holy? Well, here's what I think. I think it's called holy because it tells the truth. It tells the truth about God. It tells the truth about us. It tells the truth about who our enemy is. It tells the truth about what we've done. And it tells the truth about what God has done about it. And here's the thing about any book that tells the truth. And this is quoted from James Garfield. The truth will set you free, but first it'll make you miserable. And that's exactly what happens next. Look at verse 33. So Jesus has just said, the truth will set you free. And these new believers that he's talking to, they recoil and they snap back at them. And they say, we're off spring of Abraham. And we've never been enslaved to anyone.

So how dare you? How is it that you say you will become free? And we got to stop there because I can't believe that they said this. This is one of the most absurd sentences in the entire Bible. These people that he's speaking to, they had been enslaved in Egypt for 400 years. They'd been enslaved by Babylon, by Assyria, by Persia. I'm reading through the book of Jeremiah right now. And the whole book of Jeremiah is about one prophet, one guy saying the Babylonians are coming. You better watch out. And all the religious leaders and all the experts say the Babylonians aren't coming. And then at the end of the book, guess what happens? The Babylonians came. And then here are these people, and they're currently sitting in John chapter eight in a country occupied by Rome. There was probably a Roman soldier standing in their line of sight when they said, we have never been slaves to anyone. They believed that they were free and I think that they truly believed it. And this is gonna teach us something about how lies work and it's this. A lie does not have to be plausible to be believed. It just has to be useful. And this lie was extremely useful to them

because if they admitted that they were enslaved, that meant something. It meant that they would have to admit that Jesus had something that they actually needed. And so they cling to the lie and they held onto it as if it was true. And this brings up the second point about lies, which is so important is lies often, and I would say always get entangled and a meshed with our identities. And once a lie is part of who you think you are, it's part of your identity, you will defend it harder than you will defend the truth. And Jesus in verse 34, he doubles down. He presses even harder and he gives them the diagnosis. Truly, truly I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. Here's the point he's making. Jesus is saying every person in some way or another is enslaved to something. Because all people according to Romans chapter 3 have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. So everyone is believing some kind of lie. And I think that we as people, we just hesitant to accept that. Why? Because the lie's been useful to us. Because it's been protecting something. Because it's become so woven into our identities that we can't imagine ourselves without it. So I just want to ask just a moment of honesty this evening, what's that lie for you? Is it possible that there's a lie that you've been carrying for so long that it's almost inseparable from who you are? Jesus talked about the symptoms and so I want to give a few symptoms.

This could just be evidence of a lie in your life. You might be the comparison, you can't escape every time you open social media. Maybe it's the self-image that you have been protecting at all costs that this city rewards and affirms you for. Maybe it's the approval of a parent that you're trying to earn. Maybe it's the fear that has been running and dominating your life since you were a kid. Maybe it's just the resentment that you've been carrying for years and for years and for years. You know what it is for me? It's a fear of failure that leads me to overwork. I've been super confronted by it since having a baby and starting a family. Had a mentor say to me this week, he said, "Tim, you've got to stop calling fear in emotion. It's a spirit and until you treat it as such, you will always be afraid." Whatever it is, fill in the blank for you, all of us in some way are carrying chains that we have just become so accustomed and so familiar with walking in. Charles Spurgeon, the great preacher, he said it like this, "Imagine a man who's dying a slow death. The disease has been growing in him for years and finally a physician walks in and he tells him the diagnosis. He says, "Sir, I have bad news. It's terminal, but I have the cure." And the man stands up. He says, "I'm not sick. I've never been sick. And how dare you tell me that I'm sick?" And he walks out of the office and he dies in the street. And this is what's happening in verse 33. This is the great physician, God himself walking in and he is naming their disease with the precision of a surgeon with a scalpel and they're standing up and saying, "We have never

been sick." Now here's what I want you to see to understand Jesus. You have to understand what kind of physician he is. Jesus did not come as a religious teacher to give us a better moral framework, okay? Jesus did not come as a life coach to help us optimize our potential. He came as a physician to heal sick people. Look at how he describes himself in Mark 2. I love this. It's not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners. So this is Jesus arriving on the scene and saying, "The problem's not out there. The problem's not with the government or with politics or with education. The problem is in here and the diagnosis is sin, falling short of God's glory and his original intention and his truth for how he designed our lives to function within his will and his purposes. This is why pride and superiority are utterly excluded in the kingdom of God. This is why all the tax collectors and the prostitutes and the lowest of the low and the destitute people of society are all the ones who are getting in first ahead of all the good people and the religious leaders. This is why Jesus says those beautiful words in Matthew 5, "Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." My prayer for our church in this season is that, "Lord, you would make us poor in spirit that we might be the ones who receive and inherit the kingdom of heaven." I love what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1, he says to all of us, "Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called." Not many of you were wise by human standards. How many of you came from influential houses? to shame the wise. He chose the weak people to shame the strong. He chose the lowly people and the despised people and the people who are not to nullify

the people that are, why, so that no one would boast before him. And friends, I don't know about you, but this is good news because what it means is that you don't have to clean yourself up first. You don't have to figure it out. It means everyone qualifies. All you need to do is humble yourself and acknowledge your weakness and receive his free gift of grace. So Jesus diagnoses the problem of sin and he just keeps going. He just goes a layer deeper, verse 42. This is the most uncomfortable verse in the entire passage. He says to them, "If God were your father, you would love me, for I came from God and I'm here." So this is Jesus claiming to be God. I came not of my own accord, but he, the father, sent me. Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. You are of your father, the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and he does not stand the truth because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character for he is a liar and the father of lies. So Jesus is looking at people who said that they believed in him and he's saying that you have a different father than you think that you do. And every lie you've ever believed about God finds its source in the nature of that enemy. So who is their father? Just to be clear, Satan, the enemy, the devil, whatever you want to call him. And I don't have time tonight to do a full teaching on the demonic and Satan, but here's what I will say. The Bible's picture of our enemy is not abstract. It's not metaphorical, Jesus spoke about him and on some occasions spoke to him very frequently throughout all the Gospels.

He is real, he is intelligent, he is a personal being, he's patient, he's strategic, and he does not make obvious moves. And here's the reality, he knows who you are, he knows your story, and he knows which lie has been working on you since you were a kid and he will leverage it against you. Listen to how Paul describes the operation of the evil one in 2 Corinthians 11. Even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it's no surprise if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. So what he's saying is that the lies don't show up looking like lies, they show up looking like light, like wisdom, like maturity, like just being realistic. Sometimes, check this out, sometimes they show up looking like good Christian advice. It's the friend who tells you, "God just wants you to be happy right when you're about to do something that's incredibly self-destructive." It's a therapist who tells you, "You don't owe anyone forgiveness about the very person Jesus has called you to forgive." It's the voice calling you to be realistic when God is actually inviting you to take a step of faith. It's the voice in your own head, sounding exactly like your own that tells you, "This is who I am and this is how it will always be when God is saying that I am making all things new." Satan is too smart to attack you with a lie that looks like a lie, so he attacks you with a lie that looks like wisdom, and that's the whole point. There was a pastor named Neil Anderson who has an incredible framework that basically names the core three lies that the enemy most frequently uses, and so we'll put this up on the screen, and I just want to unpack this, and as I'm unpacking it, I just want you to actually ask the Holy Spirit, "Is there a lie in my life that I'm believing?" The first he calls lies about acceptance. These are oftentimes rooted in an experience of rejection. This is when Satan whispers, "You're unlovable." In your head, this lie sounds something like, "Love has to be earned." If they really knew me, they wouldn't stay.

Some of the things that I've done, if people really knew God would never be able to forgive me, and so if this is you, you live carefully, you manage what people see, you curate the version of yourself that will never get rejected, and this is exhausting because you feel like The second is lies about security. These are oftentimes rooted in a deep sense of fear. This is when the enemy whispers, "You'll be abandoned." This is the lie that says, "Soon or later, "God's gonna give up on me. "He's gonna let me down. "I can't trust him." If God really loved me, why are my circumstances so hard right now? And when things get hard, everyone leaves. Everyone abandons me. And so you brace and you hold back and you restrain the deepest parts of yourself from others. And you don't fully let people in because in a way you've already written the conclusion of the story in your mind. The third he talks about are lies about significance and these are oftentimes rooted in a sense of shame. And this is when Satan whispers, "You don't matter, you're not enough." John Eldridge in his book, "Father'd By God," talked about the core lie that most men wrestle with is, "I am not enough." And this is the voice in your mind that says, "My life is never gonna amount to anything. "I'm a cosmic mistake." This is that temptation to feel as if I have to be perfect

in order for God to use me. And so you climb and you produce and you stay busy and you measure yourself against every person in the room and feel a fear that you're falling short. Now here's just the question I wanna ask. Which one is yours? Which one do you resonate with it? Is it acceptance? Is it security? Is it significance? And as we just continue to move through tonight, again, just ask the Holy Spirit to reveal this to you 'cause I believe that Jesus wants to bring freedom to some people in the room tonight. So what do we do with all of this? Because you can't argue with a lie. You can't optimize past a lie. You can't outwork a lie. And so how do we respond? Well, I wanna make the case of what Jesus is saying is that the only thing that can dethrone a lie is a stronger truth, okay? And that leads to my second point, which is the truth that replaces the lie. And the only way we can talk about that is by talking about baseball. A long time ago, I was on a little league team and we had traveled to Cooperstown, New York, upstate New York for a national tournament. I was 12 years old.

And I don't know if you know about Cooperstown, but it's the home of baseball. It's where the Hall of Fame is. And they have this incredible place called Cooperstown Dreams Park, where the whole park is full of all of these replica stadiums of big league parks around the nation. And so there we are as 12 year olds playing an actual replica of Finway Park and there's lights and there's umpires and grounds crew and concessions. It's just like a little kid's dream. And we're playing in this tournament. We're playing against teams from all around the nation and we make it to the playoffs, which is a big deal. And I get myself into a situation that is what I would say is a situation every little leagueer dreams of. It's the last inning of the game, bottom of the last inning. There's one out, couple runners on. We're down by two runs and I step up to the plate. It's a sand lot moment. I'm looking over the big green monster in left field. I'm calling my shot like Babe Ruth. And I just tell myself, whatever happens on this next pitch, I am going to swing as hard as I possibly can. And so the pitch comes, I load up, I swing, I make contact. And I just hit a little dribbler to second base. They turn a double play. We lose the game.

And I'm distraught. I feel like a failure. I walk back to the dugout with my head down. And I just feel like I let all my teammates down. And as I'm sitting there in the dugout, I'll never forget this, but my coach walks up to me. He says, hey, Tim, look at me. Look him in the eyes. He says, did you see how fast you ran? I said, what? What do you mean how fast I ran? I failed. We lost the game. He said, no, no, no. He goes, I'm going to use the tape of you running the first base to train every kid in this program of how to properly run the bases. He goes, look at how fast you ran. And it just released all of the tension in my heart. I walked the dugout believing one thing about myself that I'm a failure, and in one sentence, my coach replaced that with a completely different reality. He didn't tell me to try harder. He didn't tell me to fix my swing. He spoke something deeper. And that lie that I was carrying could not survive it. It was just extinguished. And this is what Jesus does for us. He doesn't optimize your sin. He doesn't tell you to try harder.

He speaks something truer than the lie that you have been carrying and the lie can't survive it. So the question-- to set us free? If I were just to ask all of you guys this evening the question, why did Jesus come into the world? What would you say? I'm willing to guess that a lot of us would probably say, well he came to die on a cross for my sins. And there's a lot of truth to that, but I just want you guys to notice in scripture Jesus' self-proclaimed purpose for coming to the world. This is John 18. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world to bear witness to the truth. This is why Jesus came. The reason why he came and the mission that he was given by the Father was to bring the ultimate reality of the kingdom of God to our world. And he actually takes it a step further in John 14. We preached on this a few weeks ago, but the night before Jesus dies he says this beautiful thing to his disciples. He says I am the way and I am the truth and I am the life and no one comes to the Father except through me. So Jesus doesn't say that I have the truth. He doesn't say that I will teach you the truth. He says I am the truth. And just go back to the very beginning of John's gospel. I love this. In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with God. And the Word was God. And in verse 14, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. So what we see is that in Jesus, truth became a person. A truth got tired walking up a hill. Truth took naps from time to time. Truth cried at his best friend's grave. Truth touched the leper that no one else would touch and he made him clean. Truth was not a doctrine that lived in a book. Truth was a person who walked among us. And this is so important because this is what this means. This is a glorious truth. You can actually be free. You've got to understand that a slave cannot set another slave free. The only way that a slave can be set free is that the acting agent has to exist from outside of the system of slavery. And what Jesus wants to do and what the Word says about him is that he who knew no sin became sin in order that we might become the righteousness of God. And so if you will let him into your heart, what he will do is he will walk up to the lie that's been running your life and he will extinguish it. This is what he means when he says that it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. So the big question that honestly I wrestled with a lot as I was studying this text is that if Jesus promised us, we will know the truth and the truth will set us free, why does it still feel like so many of us are stuck? Right? Because he promised it. It's in his word. So why are we still struggling? And I think the secret is right here in verse 31,

Jesus places an explicit condition on freedom. He says this, "If you abide in my word, if you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and then you will know the truth and the truth will set you free." So the condition that he places is abiding. This is the Greek word meno. It means to stay, to dwell, to remain, to continue on, to persevere. This is long obedience in the same direction. Abiding just goes to war with self-optimization. Abiding says stay where the truth is and let the truth stay in you. You don't get free of the lie by adding more to your life that much is clear. You get free from the lie by remaining long enough that the truth has time to do its deep work underneath. I love how one author put it, truth without abiding is like a wedding without a marriage. The wedding is a moment. The marriage is a lifetime of staying. And if the only thing you've ever had with Jesus is a wedding day, that's why you don't feel free. So the answer for the Stutt Christian in the room, it's not just more time in the word. It's not a new Bible hack. It's remaining in the word. It's being nourished by the word. It's depending on the word and consuming the word. So I just want you guys to do this, a little application. Next time you open your Bible, it could be tonight, it could be tomorrow morning. I don't want you to do anything differently. You don't need to read more or read less or change up your plan and do Old Testament, New Testament. The only thing that I want you to do is when you open up your Bible, I want you to open it up through a lens of faith, to trust that God's promises about his own word are true and that he will meet you. Isaiah 55, "As the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return to it without watering the earth, making it bud and flourish so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater. So is my word that goes out from my mouth. It will not return to me empty, but it will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I send it out." How about Joshua 1.8? Keep this book of the law always on your lips. Meditate on it day and night so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you'll be prosperous and successful. How about 2 Timothy 3? All Scripture is God-breathed and it's useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training

and righteousness so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. And my favorite of all of them is Hebrews 4. Remember the word of God is alive and active, sharper than any double-edged sword. It penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints, and marrow. It judges the thoughts and the attitudes of the heart, and then it says nothing in all of creation is hidden from God's sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of Him to whom we must give an account. I just want to ask this question are you expecting that when you open up the word of God? In that verse in Hebrews 4 when it says everything is laid bare through the word, the Greek word is trecclesio and it literally refers to a wrestler grabbing somebody by the throat. And so God's design for His word and His truth is that it is convicting and healing, convicting and healing, convicting and healing. This is not a book that is just simply a book. It's a book that changes you in the deepest parts of who you are. This leads us to our third and final point, which is this is the good stuff. This is the freedom on the other side. So at this point, Jesus has named the lie. He's spoken the truth. He's invited us to abide, but He doesn't stop there. Verse 35. This slave does not remain in the house forever. The sun, little less, little less sun remains forever. And I love this and I want to end on this because this is one of the most beautiful things in the whole passage. The Greek word remain in verse 35 when He says the sun remains forever is the same Greek word Jesus used in verse 31 when He said, "If you abide in my word, meno, stay to remain." So what that means is that the abiding leads to the remaining. The disciple who stays in the word becomes the sun who stays in the house. Abiding and belonging are the same verb.

And as I was thinking about abiding and belonging, the only thing that came to my mind was, of course, down in the Abbey, which if you haven't seen it, I highly recommend. And if you haven't seen it, I just want you to picture for a moment a great, old, beautiful British estate, imagine a sprawling country house with fireplaces and servants walking around everywhere in tuxedos, generations of family inside. And inside that house, there are two people that are walking down the same hallway. The first is the head butler and he's worked there for 35 years. He knows every staircase. He knows where every painting hangs. He knows the dinner scheduled by heart. He's seen three generations of family come and go. And yet he doesn't belong fully. Why? Well, because he can be dismissed at any time. He can be replaced. If something goes wrong with a silverware, he's the one who answers for it. And so his standing in the house is only as good as his last performance. Now I want you to picture a second person walking through the same hallway. And this is the young son of the family, 12 years old. He doesn't know where any of the silverware is. He's never set the table. He spilled juice on the carpet last Tuesday and nobody fired him. Why? Well, because he's not there to perform. He's there because he belongs. He can't be dismissed. He can't be replaced because his identity is not in what he produces. His identity is who is in who he belongs to. And this is so important because this is the picture that Jesus is painting. The slave and the son walk through the same house.

They use the same doors. They eat at the same tables and the same building. And from the outside looking in, they can look almost identical. But one is on probation and the other one belongs at home. And what Jesus is saying is that there are so many Christians who are living like slaves in their own father's house. on paper, and you're still operating like God is your boss or like he's going to decide this week whether or not he wants to keep you for another week. This is why John Owen says the great Puritan writer, one of my favorite quotes, "The greatest unkindness we can do to the Father is to refuse to believe that he loves us." Just think about that for a minute. You might have come in tonight and you think that the worst thing that you can do is sin, worst thing that you can do is fail morally, break the rules. But Owen would say, no, no, no, the greatest unkindness is refusing to believe that God loves you. Because when you refuse to believe he loves you, you are not just doubting a feeling, you are rejecting him as Father. You're saying, "I know that you've adopted me, but I just still don't trust it. Still don't trust you. I still think I've got to earn it. I still think I have to perform." And I believe that breaks the Father's heart. Now look at the last verse, verse 36, this is the gospel in one sentence. This is a great one to commit to memory. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. And I just want to close with this question, why does it have to be the Son? Like why does it have to be Jesus specifically? And here is the beauty of the gospel. This is the ultimate reality. The reason why it's only the Son who can set us free is because the Son became a slave

first. Listen to what Paul says in Galatians 4. This is explicit explanation and commentary on everything that Jesus does in John 8. He says, "When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son. So the Son leaves the house, leaves the Father's house. Born of a woman, born under the law, so the Son becomes a slave. He puts on flesh. He subjects Himself to all of the constraints that we feel and know as humans. He takes on the law and He becomes everything that you are. To redeem those who were under the law. And this is what we call the great exchange. This is where Jesus pays the penalty that we deserve. This is where He dies in our place and He literally buys us out so that we might receive adoption as sons and daughters. This is not a metaphor. This is legal contractual language. You did not work your way into this family. You were bought into this family by a courtroom and the verdict that God speaks over your life is son and daughter and dearly beloved. This is what His word says and because we are sons and daughters, the Spirit is planted in our hearts and testifies crying out Abba Father. And the point that I just want to make is the reason why Jesus is the truth who can set us free is because the Son became a slave so that slaves could become sons and daughters. And that is a beautiful truth. So I just want to close by telling you the story and showing you the story of a woman in our church who was baptized recently. She's actually in this room tonight and her name is Caitlyn. And if you haven't met Caitlyn, she is a bright light in the city of New York. And as you watch her story, I just want you to pay attention to some of the lies that were being launched against her and the freedom that she has received in Jesus.

So check out this video. My name is Caitlyn. I grew up in the church, but after early childhood sexual abuse, I experienced a series of oppression. I was saved by Jesus from my first suicide attempt when I was eleven years old. And God was kind enough to pursue me, which led to my salvation at fourteen, but shortly after it got sucked into a similar situation that just swallowed me whole. By the time that I graduated college, I was completely and totally focused on building protection for myself through wealth, through climbing the corporate ladder, and just remained hopeful that maybe I could get married to someone who loved me after everything that had happened to me. I ended up getting married at twenty-five and three months, and to be married discovered some really painful news that led to our eventual divorce. And so the next couple of years just did the best I could to survive, but just felt like I was trying to manage the pain of a situation that I couldn't really control. [MUSIC PLAYING] In April of last year on Easter morning, I woke up hungover and just felt like I can't bear to live any longer. What I'm doing is not working. And I don't remember how I survived the next couple of weeks, but the Lord started to put on my heart from Joel to 12 returned to me with all of your heart. And I'd remembered that a friend from Houston told me about Church of the City. And so I went to the Westside location one Sunday, sat in the back and listened to Pastor John preach. And for the first time in a very long time, the gospel actually felt like good news. I kept coming back and then in July, I listened to Pastor Tim preach on how his life had fallen apart, but Jesus had restored it. And I knew that God was telling me to go forward for prayer. And so I reluctantly did so. And I don't remember a lot of what this woman prayed for me, but I do remember her saying, God, would you speak tenderly to Caitlin? Would she know that you do not want to take from her? And would she give her vision for all the things that you want to give her? And that night I gave Jesus all of my life. And there's no other way to say this, but he gave me an entirely new life starting that night. Nothing has stayed the same. There were memories that I thought I was going to go to the grave trying to manage the trauma of that he has completely given me a new vantage point on. I just suffered from a lot of anxiety

from the oppression of other people's opinions that no longer make me fearful because I operate under the lordship of a perfect heavenly father who's full of compassion. I was in the prayer room in September and I heard the Lord say you'll never again be tempted by thoughts of suicide. And to this day I have not had one thought of suicide. I have at many points in time had the privilege of just telling people this is what the Lord has done for me. This is who he is and seeing many people come to know Jesus this year just from his grace of allowing me to be at the right place in the right time. And then as we were launching the east side location part of our staff and our our vision casting meeting said it would be great if we could write the names of people that we're praying for to come to know Jesus one day on a road case that we roll in and out of this location and I wrote down the names of several friends and I've gotten to cross the first one off because she accepted Jesus. Every single person on our staff every volunteer has just in some part healed my experience with church and you're not laboring in vain. For the rest of my life I will be expressing my gratitude for what God's done in this place of New York City. My parents even this week and I was talking to them they were talking about we had so much fear in our hearts for you going to New York because we thought that you were you were entering just such a secular culture and like how mighty God is that you encountered him most powerfully in New York City of all places at the church and I just just like you're right I no one could have ever thought that but this is how God works and I'm just so grateful that I walked through the doors of this church. Incredible. Kaitlyn is here she's where's Kaitlyn at right there Kaitlyn. Can I yeah one more time for Kaitlyn. The book of Revelation says that the way in which we overcome the enemy and overcome his lies is through the blood of the lamb the gospel and the word of our testimony and Kaitlyn when I first heard your story when you were baptized I shared with you that God is going to use that story to set other people free and I love everything about her story because it is a perfect example of what it looks like for Jesus to come into a person's life and dethrone a lie and bring freedom. I love that she said for the first time in my life the gospel actually felt like good news and so all around this room we're just going to go into a moment of just response. This is this is a holy moment between you and your heavenly Father. You can close your eyes bow your heads just enter into a posture of prayer. Just for a moment don't don't think about don't worry about the people around you. Just allow the ministry of the Holy Spirit to come into your heart.

was hopelessly irredeemable, and I can assure you that it's not. You might be here, and you've just given up on the idea of freedom, because there is a sin pattern, there is a lie, there is an area of bondage in your life that you feel like you cannot shake. You might be here tonight, and you're just like white knuckle in it through the Christian life, and it feels like striving and performing, like you're constantly just trying to earn your way back into God's good graces. And if any of those resonate with you, I just want to pray over you right now before we just move into this moment of response. Father, we just want to come before you and say thank you for the gospel. Thank you that the gospel is, in fact, good news. I'm just reminded, God, of the reality, 16 years ago that I sat in a church service just like this in the back, skittish and afraid, and the pastor invited me to raise my hand to receive you. And 16 years later, I just see that the gospel is still at work and still saving people. And so, Father, right now, I just pray, and I release the spirit of adoption over this room. I just pray, Father, that you would remind followers of Jesus that they are sons and daughters in the household of the King. I just pray, Father, that the glorious inheritance that comes in Christ Jesus would become manifest and received in the hearts of all people. Lord, we just come against a spirit of fear right now. And we just pray, Father, that ultimate truth would walk into the room through the person of Jesus Christ. Lord, we pray all of this with a spirit of faith and expectation that you will meet us right where we're at because you say come as you are. We love you and honor you. It's in Christ's name we pray. Amen.