True discipleship John 8:31-36
Up until now Jesus’ message was very broad having a public appeal, but now His comments have become very specific and they’re aimed at those who really wanted to follow Him. And these were people who believed in Him in terms of who He was and the claims He made. And so, His message to them was simply this, in verse 31 He says, “If you remain in My word, you will truly be my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.” To remain means to be obedient or to make a lifetime commitment to His teaching.
After all, true discipleship is something continuous. It’s not the guy who raises his hand in a meeting and never comes back again or the one who loses interest when he finds out his personal needs won’t be met. I remember when I was first saved, there was a group of us witnessing to people and handing out tracts on Yonge Street in Toronto. And right out of the blue this loudmouth drunk came up and started yelling, “I know all about the Bible. I’ve accepted the Lord and I’m just as good as all of you are.” And then he started quoting Bible verses just to show us that he knew what he was talking about.
The issue wasn’t whether or not he knew the Bible, or whether he had accepted the Lord whatever that meant or even how good he was. The issue was whether or not he was living in obedience to God’s word. And by his drunken arrogant behavior I suspected that he wasn’t.
And then Jesus tells them the fringe benefit of such a commitment was real spiritual freedom. I mean false beliefs hold men’s mind in bondage but the truth liberates them.
Now, what He was doing was emphasizing the nature of true discipleship. And He was teaching these people that faith involves obedience to the word of God. And I’ve said everywhere I speak, all of us need to have some system of discipline to make us obedient to the Lord and I believe this starts with developing a habit of getting into the word and then getting the word into our lives.
Listen, we all have habits and there are certain things we do everyday. Some have breakfast, have a shower and then go about their business. Some go to work and others might begin by reading the paper or watching the news. What I’m saying is, we’re all different in that we all have our own system of managing our time and doing the things we have to do. But, each of us needs to work in some time for studying the scripture as one of those things we do every day. And it doesn’t matter if you do it first thing in the morning or the last thing at night or some specific time during the day. But we all have to set aside a specific time and we shouldn’t let anything or anyone interfere with our time in the word.
You see, without a steady diet in the scriptures our spiritual life will be a series of ups and downs. One day we’re up and the next we’re down and then there will be days when we don’t know where we are. And I’m talking about life from a spiritual perspective. The problem some of us have is that we go to church on Sunday and get well fed and then we starve ourselves until the next week. If you did that physically you’d be sick half the time. You’d be either bloated or starving to death. That’s why we need to set aside some time to be with God and learn from His word and that will give us a sense of consistency in what can often be a very inconsistent world.
So, here Jesus is telling His followers that they need to be true disciples and discipleship begins with faith and this faith is strengthened by both our time in the word and our obedience to it and through our time in the word we grow in our knowledge of God. So, can anything be any easier than developing a habit of spending time with God? Of course you’d say no. But listen, there are things that happen that are simply unexplainable that will keep us away from the scripture.
Let me illustrate. When you decide you need to have regular devotions, for the first little while you’ll find every excuse in the world to put it off until later. You’ll tell yourself, I’m too busy this morning so I’ll find some time this afternoon. And then the afternoon comes, you get busy doing the normal things of life and you forget. Then you go to bed at night and you’ll say to yourself, “I’m too tired tonight but I’ll spend twice as much time tomorrow.” And the next day you’ll think of another reason to put it off but instead of feeling guilty you’ll probably say something like this to yourself, “Having devotions just isn’t for me. I’m just not the disciplined type.” And as soon as we believe something like that, the devil has us just where he wants us. Because he knows we know the Lord but he also knows that now we won’t have anything to sustain or motivate our spiritual life. And what would please the devil more than having a bunch of Christians who couldn’t care less about their own spiritual condition or the spiritual needs of the unsaved who are living around them.
I believe there are three things that will get in our way whenever we try to do anything to get closer to God. There is the world, the flesh and the devil. And these are the three great enemies of the Christian life.
First, there’s the world. And I’m sure you’ve realized that there’s always something the people of this world find to be more important than spending time with God. There is making money, having fun or just relaxing doing nothing. God is not in their thoughts.
I remember a friend told me he had gone to the guidance counselor when he was in high school and the counselor asked him if he had any plans for after he graduated and he told him he really wanted to serve God. He said he thought this man would suggest a Bible college or two he could look into but the counselor gave him some psychological tests to try and find out what was wrong with him. After all, everyone knows normal people are not pre-occupied with God. My friend learned the hard way that the world is no friend of God or God’s children for that matter.
And there are all kinds of things in this world to keep us so pre-occupied that we don’t have time for God so it’s a matter of our will. We have to determine that spending time with God is more important than anything else. And as I said before, the best thing to do is start with five minutes a day in the scripture. Everybody has to start somewhere and the problem we all face is, if you bite off more than you can chew you’ll lose your appetite in a hurry.
And then there’s the flesh. And the flesh is that part of our fallen nature that wants nothing to do with God. Paul talks about the battle that wages between our flesh and spirit in the book of Romans where he says in chapter 7:18-20, “For I know that in me (that is in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find. For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice. Now if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.” And the same problem Paul faced with his sin nature is one we wrestle with every day. And let’s face it, none of us is perfect and we won’t be until the day we stand in the presence of the Lord.
There used to be a group that believed in what’s known as entire sanctification. And they believed that when you were saved the Lord took away your sin nature. And that meant that you were perfect. (Now, I think that’s great idea. It just isn’t true.) A friend of mine went to one of these meetings and talked to one of the leaders afterward. He said to the man, “So, you’re sinless.” The guy said, “Yes, the Lord completely took my sin away.” My friend said, “I don’t think you’re sinless because you certainly don’t seem to be any better than anyone else here.” And the guy was getting a little huffy and he said, “I don’t care what you believe I know what I am.” And my friend said, “For someone who has reached perfection I would have thought you’d be a little more patient.” And the man got really angry when he said this. And then my friend asked him if his anger was a sign of perfection. You see, it doesn’t take long to expose someone else’s sin and I think it take even less to sense our own.
And you know what that’s like. Your spirit wants to read the Bible but your flesh would rather watch T.V. Your spirit wants to go to church but your flesh would rather go to the beach. Your spirit wants to give something to the Lord’s work but your flesh would rather spend the money on something frivolous. And that’s a battle that will go on in one form or another until the day we die.
I remember when my kids were born. We were so excited about them coming home from the hospital. There were a thousand things I wanted to do with them. But they were boring, all they did was eat and sleep. And when they weren’t doing either one of these things they were either crying for something to eat or looking for clean clothes because they found something else to do. And I’m sure you’re not surprised by that because that’s what babies do. And believers are the same way. The scripture says we’re all babes in Christ and we need to be fed spiritually and we also need to be cleaned up by the Lord and if we don’t, believe me, we’ll end up crying and really making a fuss.
So here we have Jesus talking to His disciples and that includes all those who just put their faith in Him in verse 30 plus His regular followers and He’s telling them that they can experience freedom from the bondage of sin when He says, “If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”
To abide in His word meant you had to know and then practice His word and listen to this, to even read the Bible back in those days meant you had to go to the synagogue because that’s where the scriptures were. I mean, just think of the times they lived in. Nobody had their own Bible.
I remember studying about the Ethiopian eunuch who was reading the scripture while he was riding in his chariot and my first thought was, “He must have stolen the Bible from the hotel in Jerusalem.” But, we know that didn’t happen because there were no printing presses back then. So, it says he was reading from the book of Isaiah and about the only place he could have gotten this book was to buy it from a scribe in Jerusalem. And that would really cost a lot of money. After all, the whole thing was printed by hand.
Did you know that the textus receptus which is the name of the collection of scrolls on which we base the King James Version consists of over 5000 pieces. And that means that all these pieces were handmade portions of the word of God. And miraculously, there is agreement in these manuscripts to the point that we figure we have 99.9% of the original text. But, if there were 5,000 pieces then you realize that very few people had access to a whole copy of the New Testament. So, they would go to a church where it was being read and studied.
Jesus told them they needed to abide in His word, even though this could be a very difficult thing to do. And we are told to do the same thing but we certainly don’t have their excuse. I mean, I have at least seven different versions in English alone on my bookshelves.
So He said that if they remained in His word they would be His disciples. And discipleship begins with a belief. It begins the moment we believe the gospel message. And this refers to all that Jesus said about the wonders of heaven and the terrors of hell and it also includes all that He said about the plan of salvation and the fate of the lost.
Discipleship also means staying true to the word of God. As believers we’re all concerned with knowing the will of God and what better place to find it than in the word of God. It’s interesting that the word disciple means learner. And all our life we are to spend learning more and more about the Christian life. I saw a commercial on T.V. one night where a guy sat down at a computer and worked away for a while then he got up and told his wife that he saw everything there was to see on the internet. And just as we know that that’s impossible we also realize that we’ll never know all there is to know about the word of God.
And of course it almost goes without saying that being a disciple also means being obedient to the word. After all, we don’t study His word just to beat each other in a game of Bible Monopoly. We study His word to do it.
Now, being a disciple doesn’t mean were perfect. When we think about the apostles of the Lord most of us have an image of very serious saintly types. And yet, nothing could be farther from the truth. As we read the New Testament we find they were not only petty and selfish most of the time but at the end of three years of traveling with Jesus and listening to His teaching they showed very little if any spiritual maturity. It was only after His death and resurrection that we see a real change in any of them and yet they were disciples.
You see, a disciple is not a believer who has a deeper commitment than those around them but the word disciple just means one who learns from another. And you’ll remember back in chapter 6 where it says there were many disciples who went back and quit following the Lord. So it stands to reason that if one who was called a disciple could throw in the towel then the word disciple is certainly not a guarantee of sainthood or a title for the deeper life but it’s just another word for a believer or follower.
There’s a false gospel of easy-believism that says a person can accept the Lord but still live in rebellion to His Lordship. And this false gospel makes no moral demands on their lives. This is like the guy who sings, “Take my wife and let her be, consecrated Lord to thee. Take a dollar now and then, but stay away from me. Amen.” These are people who see the doctrine of eternal security like a fire insurance policy. But this is a policy that was written in hell by the devil himself and it’s intention is to deceive men and woman with false hope.
I don’t know how many times I’ve visited with people in this town who’ve said about their drunken rebellious kids, “Well, we know they’re saved because they accepted the Lord when they were at Sunday school or Christian camp.” Listen, I believe in the doctrine of eternal security but I also believe that those who are saved live like it. In theology it’s called the perseverance of the saints. And what that means is; if you don’t live like it, then you’re obviously not saved.
And even the non-Christian world agrees with this. Dr. Shad Helmstetter said, “People describe us by our behavior and our behavior is a reflection of our feelings. Our feelings are rooted in our attitude and our attitudes are affected by our beliefs.” And what he’s saying is our behavior is rooted in our beliefs. And so if we believe right; we’ll live right.
And if we believe there is a loving God in control of the world and He’s working all things together for good then we will be more positive toward the ups and downs of life than the one who thinks they’ve climbed out of primordial slime and they’re headed for the dustbin.
So, a true disciple of Jesus Christ is simply a believer whose faith has motivated him toward a life of obedience. And much of our confusion about discipleship stems from our understanding of the matter of salvation. Salvation is a free gift but one that demands everything. Henry Drummand the Scottish preacher was speaking about salvation one night at an exclusive club in London and he said, “Gentlemen, the entrance fee into the kingdom of heaven is nothing, however, the annual subscription is everything.”
And those who are saved become disciples or disciplined in the word of God and then He can use us. When I think of the kind of people God uses Philip comes to mind and we have a little snapshot of him in Acts 6 and 8. He was someone who was prepared spiritually. It says he was filled with the Spirit. He was also prepared mentally because he could take the word of God and preach the gospel. And he was prepared in his heart. He loved people. He wasn’t a sourpuss. I’ve met a few men over the years who had a reputation for taking a very strong stand for the word of God but these same men weren’t very loving. If anything they seemed like they were mad at everyone who didn’t hold to their position.
We also see in Acts 6 that Philip was waiting on tables in the church. And what we seem to miss is that he wasn’t waiting tables where everyone would say, “My, what a humble man.” He was waiting tables where twenty thousand people went to church and nobody would have even noticed him unless he dropped something or they ran out of food. Then right after that in chapter 8 it says he preached a great revival in Samaria and multitudes were saved. Now, you would think he had finally arrived but then God called him to leave this great revival and go reach one man way out in the desert. And that one man was the Ethiopian eunuch. Philip was obedient and yet he didn’t know it but listen, Christianity continued in Ethiopia for over a thousand years. Imagine all the people that were saved because of this one person who was reached with the gospel through Philip. You see, Philip was someone who wanted to be used and he was.
I used to live in a Christian commune in Toronto and one night a few of us were sitting around talking about what we’d like to do in the future. One guy said he’d like to be a Pastor of a big church, another wanted to be a famous singer, and another wanted to run a business so he could fund the other two. And the fourth guy said he was praying that God would let him lead an evangelist to the Lord. He didn’t want to be the D.L. Moody. He wanted to be the Mordecia Ham that reached him. We never know who we’re talking to or what potential they’ll have for the Lord but He’ll bless our efforts if we’re faithful.
There is an old legend of Martin of Tours, the soldier saint. One cold winter day he was entering a city and a beggar asked alms. Martin had nothing to give him. But the beggar was blue with cold, so Martin took off the old battered soldier’s cloak he wore, cut in two and gave half to the beggar, who blessed him and was gone. That night Martin had a dream. In it he saw heaven and all the angels were gathered around Jesus’ throne. And as he looked closely he noticed that Jesus was wearing a half of a soldier’s cloak. One of the angels said to Him, “Master, why are you wearing that old cloak?” And Jesus answered, “My servant Martin gave it to me.” I know that’s just a story but Jesus said, “Whatever we do to the least of these we do for Him.”
And so a disciple is someone who is obedient to the will of the Lord. And that means wanting His will rather than my own. And besides being obedient it also means that we identify with Him. And that tells us that to the degree the people of the world reject Jesus Christ they’ll reject us as well.
This kind of commitment is what separates the people who change this world from those who go with the flow. For instance, we’ve all heard of Florence Nightingale. She wrote in her diary, “I am thirty years of age, the age at which Christ began His mission; now, no more childish things, no more vain things.” Years later toward the end of her life when she was asked how she was able to accomplish so much for the Lord she replied, “I can only give one explanation and that is this, I kept nothing back from God.”
There was a famous surgeon named Howard Kelly and when he graduated from medical school he wrote, “Today, I dedicate myself, my time, my capabilities my ambition and everything else to Him. Blessed Lord, satisfy me to thy uses, give me no worldly success which may not lead me nearer to my Savior.”
And soon after graduating from college Jim Elliot wrote in his diary, “God, I pray thee, light the idle sticks of my life that I may burn for thee. Consume my life, my God, for it is thine. I seek not a long life but a full one like you, Lord Jesus.” And God answered his prayer when Jim died at the hands of the Auca Indians in the jungles of Ecuador. Listen, we may never be called to die for God but each of us is called to live for Him.
II Reaction
And then we see the reaction to what Jesus said in verse 33 and there’s a bit of confusion here because it seems as though this was said by the same believers He was talking to in verses 31 and 32 but it’s actually the scribes and Pharisees who are in the crowd. And they’re really ticked off because they see people believing in Jesus and also because He said, “The truth shall make you free.”
They not only don’t understand what He said but they respond by saying, “We were never in bondage to any man and how can you promise us freedom?” And this is an amazing statement when you consider who said this. I mean, these were the very descendants of the Jews who had been in bondage to the Egyptians for four hundred years and later they were captives of the Babylonians and the Assyrians throughout their history and now they were subject to the Romans. Of course these people did the very minimum to be obedient to Roman rule so they didn’t consider the Romans to be in charge but they were. And this becomes even more evident as we come to the arrest and crucifixion of Jesus because we see that they couldn’t do anything unless the Roman soldiers took charge.
But, in spite of their captivity or even their slavery the Jews set a tremendous value on freedom which they held to be the birthright of every Jew. So when they said they were no man’s slaves they were saying something that was a fundamental article of their own creed. They always had an independent spirit which meant they might be slaves in body but never in soul.
III Jesus’ response to their reaction.
And what He does here is clarify what He said. In verse 34 when Jesus says that whoever commits sin is a slave to sin. So He wasn’t talking about political bondage. He was referring to the bondage of sin. And He uses the word ‘doulos’ which means slave to describe the one who practices sin. So, a sinner is a slave to sin. And as they all knew; if you were born a slave you died a slave unless someone set you free. And He also reminds them of the insecurity of a slave. I mean a slave was considered to be a living tool and he could be thrown out of the house or even killed if he was no longer useful but a son was always free to do whatever he wanted.
And as slaves to sin the freedom we’ve experienced from sin is two-fold. First, we are completely free both now and forever from the penalty of sin because that was what the cross was all about. Jesus has completely paid the price and if I think there’s some punishment that I have yet to face then I don’t understand His forgiveness. When He said, “It is finished” it was finished. There was nothing more to be done. The cross was the ultimate payment of sin and the very thought that you or I could add anything to it would simply be an insult to God.
And so, as Christians we have God and all the glories of heaven to look forward to but in the meantime we still wrestle with the presence of sin. We are dead in Christ but the flesh is still alive and kicking. Now listen, our flesh makes a lot of noise but we need to do as Paul tells us in Romans 6 and reckon it as dead to sin and yield ourselves to God.
I was thinking about the ‘ten commandments’ the other day. The first five forbid worshipping anyone or anything but God. And then the sixth forbids rebellion again your parents. The seventh is about stealing and warns us not to take anything that doesn’t belong to us. The eighth deals with lying and forbids us to ever say anything that’s less than true. The ninth deals with adultery and forbids a sexual relationship with anyone other than the one we’re married to. And the tenth is about coveting and forbids us from even wanting anything that belongs to someone else.
These are the rules of life that God has given us but you and I both know that there’s something inside of us that wants to break the rules. Someone puts up a wet paint sign that says ‘Don’t Touch’ and before you know it, the paint job is full of fingerprints. I was on a train one time and the sign in the bathroom said, “No spitting.” And what’s do you think I did? It was a natural reaction? I was at Niagara Falls and there was a sign that said, “Don’t lean over the rail.” And what was everybody doing? They were all leaning over the rail. When you have to go for tests in the hospital in the morning, sometimes it says on the sheet, “Do not eat or drink anything for 14 hours before the test.” And five minutes after supper you’re hungry and thirsty. Why do we do these things? Paul tells us in Roman 8:7 when he says, “The carnal mind is at enmity with God.” The things were told not to do are the very things we want to do.
Listen, I can love the Lord with all my heart but my flesh still wants to do it’s own thing. And the stronger I am spiritually the more control I’ll have over my flesh. But, no matter how strong I get, I have to keep in mind that perfection doesn’t come before heaven.
IV His invitation
“If the Son shall make you free you shall be free indeed.” The term ‘free indeed’ means to be truly free. And here Jesus is offering real freedom to those who are captives of sin. And this is freedom from sins power, sin’s guilt and sin’s consequences. It’s freedom from the very burden of sin. And true freedom is not the freedom to do whatever we want but to do what we know we should. And it’s genuine freedom because doing what we know we should is the very thing that we’ll want to do.
I heard a story about a little bamboo shoot that was transplanted from the jungle and placed in the garden of a king’s palace. And in the palace garden it grew to about 75 feet tall and it towered over all the other trees and provided a place for both shade and fellowship for the king.
One day as the king was in the garden Bamboo noticed that something was bothering him. He hoped there was something he could do in order to express his love and gratitude to the king. So, he asked him what was bothering him.
Oh, Bamboo said the king, we have everything we need in abundance up here in the royal garden but the people down in the village are having a famine because of the drought. There’s plenty of water up here but we have no way of getting it down the mountain.
Bamboo thought about it long and hard and then with a heavy heart he said to the king, “I’ll be the means of getting the water down the mountain.” The king said, “Bamboo, you don’t know what you are saying. We’d have to cut off all your beautiful branches and you’ll lose the admiration of all the other trees. We’d have to cut you down and then you would no longer be the tallest tree in the garden. And then we’d have to split you down the center and you’d be desecrated in the eyes of the world. And Bamboo said, “Everything that seems so important to me now will someday be gone anyway. I want to give what I have now that others may live.”
And that ought to be our intention as well. After all, we were transplanted from the kingdom of darkness and brought into the kingdom of light. And each of us has been called by God to be the means of getting the water of God’s word to a lost and dying world.
