Teaching Text

john 8:31-47

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.”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. I am telling you what I have seen in the Father’s presence, and you are doing what you have heard from your father.”

“Abraham is our father,” they answered. “If you were Abraham’s children,” said Jesus, “then you would do what Abraham did. As it is, you are looking for a way to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. Abraham did not do such things. You are doing the works of your own father.”

“We are not illegitimate children,” they protested. “The only Father we have is God himself.”

Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I have come here from God. I have not come on my own; God sent me. Why is my language not clear to you? Because you are unable to hear what I say. You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. Yet because I tell the truth, you do not believe me! Can any of you prove me guilty of sin? If I am telling the truth, why don’t you believe me? Whoever belongs to God hears what God says. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God.”

Sermon Recap

This Sunday, Pastor Tim continued the FREED series with a teaching on freedom from lies, opening with a confession: he had spent too much time on Christian YouTube that week. A reel about morning routines. A book on Sabbath listened to at 1.6 speed. He named what many of us already know but rarely say out loud: New York has trained us to believe that freedom is always one system away. One more routine, one better habit, one cleaner schedule. If we are not careful, that same logic colonizes our spiritual lives. The reason you don't feel free, Pastor Tim argued, isn't that you haven't optimized hard enough. It's that there is a lie beneath the surface of your life that no amount of optimization will ever touch.

Drawing from John 8, Pastor Tim showed that Jesus was speaking not to His enemies, but to brand new believers, people who had just said yes. His first move was to test the sincerity of that belief. The crowd's response revealed exactly how lies work: a lie does not have to be plausible to be believed, it just has to be useful. Once a lie becomes part of your identity, you will defend it harder than you will defend the truth. Pastor Tim named three categories where these lies tend to land, drawn from Neil Anderson: lies about acceptance, lies about security, and lies about significance. He was careful to note that the enemy rarely attacks with something that looks like a lie. He attacks with something that looks like wisdom, maturity, even good Christian advice.

The second movement turned to the truth that replaces the lie. Truth, Pastor Tim reminded us, is not first a proposition. It is a person who walked among us, who wept at His best friend's grave, who touched the leper no one else would touch. Jesus' doesn't say He has the truth or will teach the truth. He says, "I am the truth." The condition He places on freedom is not more effort but abiding, the Greek word menow, meaning to stay, to remain, to dwell. Truth without abiding, as one author put it, is like a wedding without a marriage. The ceremony happens, but nothing takes root.

Pastor Tim closed with the image of a slave and a son walking through the same house, using the same doors, eating at the same tables, nearly indistinguishable from the outside. The difference is belonging. The slave's standing is only as good as his last performance. The son cannot be dismissed because his identity is not in what he produces but in who he belongs to. Jesus became a slave so that slaves could become sons and daughters. That is the shape of the gospel. The invitation of the evening was simply this: stop performing for a Father who has already welcomed you home.