Well please turn with me if you will in your Bible to the gospel of John chapter 8, and we're going to be looking at verses 31 through 59 this morning, so that's John chapter 8 verses 31 through 59. You may recall as we've been exploring John's gospel, especially recently, that Jesus has been engaging with a group of very religious people, these were moral people. They had a lot of good, conservative values, and so there are a kind of people that you would have typically seen in church every week. They had a high view of God as they understood him to be, but in many respects they were placing a lot of confidence in the externals. They were placing confidence in the fact that they were children of Abraham. They belonged to the nation of Israel with whom God established his covenant. They had received that covenant sign. They took solace in that. They took solace in their good works, in their morality, in their family values that we so highly regard in so many respects, and Jesus confronts them. He confronts them by suggesting that there is a measure of darkness that exists within their lives, that they have not even begun to come to terms with, and they've actually been avoiding God all along by placing their hope in their belonging to the visible community of Israel and in their good works. So he has a really kind of counterintuitive evangelistic style. When you read about Jesus as saying here, it's almost like he's trying to talk people out of faith in him. It's really bizarre. You look in this particular passage, if you look at the very beginning, you'll see in verse 31 that Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him and then he goes on to say, there was a measure of superficial kind of lighthearted belief that the Jews had in Jesus. But then once you get to the end of the story and verse 59, you see that the people picked up stones to throw at him. So there is a radical shift in the mood that happens in this short story, and we're going to explore that today. So let's go ahead and take a moment to read it now from John chapter 8 beginning in verse 31. John says this, 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 the slave to sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever. The sun remains forever. So if the sun sets you free, you will be free indeed. I know that you are the 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 that Abraham did, but now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. This is not what Abraham did. You are doing the works 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 has nothing to do with 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 convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me? Whoever is of God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God. The Jews answered him. Are we not right in saying that you are a Samaritan and have a demon? Jesus answered, I do not have a demon, but I honor my father, and you dishonor me, yet I do not seek my own glory. There is one who seeks it, and he is the judge. Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death. The Jews said to him, now we know that you have a demon. Abraham died as did the prophets, and yet you say, if anyone keeps my word, he will never taste death. Are you greater than our father, Abraham, who died? And the prophets died. Who do you make yourself out to be? Jesus answered, if I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is my father who glorifies me of whom you say, he is our God, but you have not known him. I know him. If I were to say that I do not know him, I would be a liar like you, but I do know him, and I keep his word. Your father, Abraham, rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad, so the Jews said to him, you are not yet 50 years old, and you have seen Abraham? Jesus said to them, truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am, so they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple. Amen, this is God's word to us this morning. Well, I will never forget exactly where I was when I discovered that I was going bald. It was not the most joyous day of my life. I was in college. It was during summer vacation, a friend of mine and I had driven up to Sacramento to visit another mutual friend of ours, and it was a rainy day. It's almost unheard of that it rains in June in California, but it just so happened to do that, and of course we were totally unprepared, and the rain drops are falling on our head, and in the most sensitive, nuanced way my friend could possibly conjure up, he said to me, dude, you're going bald. Thanks a lot, really appreciated that. So, I would get out of the shower every morning, and I would look in the mirror and just be in complete denial that eventually my head was going to look exactly like my father's. It was a scary situation, and we all realize that we have some of our father's characteristics, whether we like it or not, that is not one of the characteristics I was hoping to inherit from my father, but it's one that I got, and we all inherit some characteristics of our fathers. My parents were visiting just a few months ago, and I was seeing this more and more, as I get older, I start to see that I'm becoming more like my parents, especially like my dad and my mannerisms, and in the way that I process information, the way that I think, and just even in the way in which I stand, it starts to look so much more like my dad than I ever began to imagine. You have characteristics of your father, and for many of you, that's something that brings you joyous. He's a person that you aspire to be like in so many respects. For others of you, it's making you cringe that I would even suggest that being a reality in your life. But Jesus here is saying that we have a father, and who our father is, profoundly affects what it is that we desire in this life. The things that we gravitate towards. What we strive to do and strive to be, whoever our father is, helps us to explain how we make sense out of the world, and how we make sense out of God, and how we understand ourselves. So much dependent upon who our father is, and so what we see and what we perceive about life is ultimately tied up and whoever it is that lays claim to us. And what Jesus is forcing us to deal with in this passage this morning, the question he's forcing us to come to terms with is who's your daddy? Who is your father? That's what he wants us to see, and he's only giving us a couple of options. He's saying that your father is either God, the one true God, that there is of whom he is the only begotten son, of whom he is the mediator, or your God is the devil. Your father is the devil. That's a in-your-face confrontational way of bringing that to bear upon our lives, but that's the only two option that he seems to be getting us. And so either God is our father, and we give evidence of that by abiding in him and reflecting his character in our life, or the devil is our father, and we reflect that by abiding in him and reflecting his evil character in our life. Look at what Jesus says here. In verse 31, he says that if you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will do what? It will set you free. And in verse 42, he says this, if God were your father, you would love me for I came from God, and I am here. And then when you skip down to verse 47, you discover that Jesus says whoever is of God hears the words of God, the reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God. And so what he's saying is that if God is your father, then you're going to love Jesus. You're going to cherish him and desire him above all things, and you're going to acknowledge that he is God, but he comes from the Father, and you're going to listen to his word, and you're going to be seeking to abide in it and follow it, and you're going to experience the freedom that comes from knowing and living out the implications of having God is your father. So that's one side of the story. The only other possibility is that the devil is your father. And look at what he says about that. In verse 37, he says that my word finds no place in you. And again, in verses 37 and 40, he says that you seek to kill me. And in verse 43, this is what he says. He says, 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 what the your father desires. And so what are the devil's desires? What characterizes him? This is what he says in verse 44. He says that the devil was a murderer from the beginning. Has nothing to do with the truth because there's no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character for he is a liar, and he's what? The father of lies. So those are your options in life. But your father is either God or your father is either the devil and you're going to reflect his character. And Jesus is saying that there's something about the devil's character that is murderous and full of lies. Most of us wouldn't characterize ourselves like that. Most anybody wouldn't characterize themselves like that. But this is what a murderer does. A murderer treats someone else as subhuman, attacks their very humanity. How apparent is that in so many of our lives and so many respects? That's actually glorified even in our culture by what you see on television. The devil is the father of lies. It means that you're building your life on a false identity and you're presenting that false identity to other people as the real you when that is not who you are. That's part of what the character of the evil one is like. And so when Jesus says things like you are of your father or the devil in the world in which we live, that is a wildly offensive and laughable thing to say to somebody. It's laughable because it's just so beyond the pale. It's over the top. It's so confrontational and absolute. And in many pockets of the culture in which we live to suggest that there even actually is a devil is wildly naive and primitive. But this is what Jesus is saying here and Jesus does not capitulate himself to our modern 21st century Western culture sensibilities because he's bringing the truth to bear upon our lives and he wants us to see this. And he's bringing us to face the reality that truth is something that is transcendent. It stems from himself and it's not something that we define for ourselves. It's not something that we just make up as we go along in order to achieve our own ends. And that's where the rubber kind of meets the road when Jesus is talking about truth here. There was a well-known physicist by the name of Ernst Mach from where we get Mach speed. Like when the space shuttles orbiting the earth and you hear that's traveling at Mach 22 or something like that where we get this from. This guy Ernst Mach, he was a physicist in the late 19th and early 20th century. This is what he had to say. He said, a piece of knowledge is never false or true but only more or less biologically and evolutionarily useful. Did you listen to that? He's saying truth is what is useful to you. Truth is what improves your quality of life. That's our culture's definition of truth and it is a devastating view of truth. It's completely devastating because with that view of truth it just fuels all sorts of possible injustices, all types of injustices stem from that view of truth. Just this past week I was having lunch with another pastor friend of mine who is a gospel believing Christ exalting Bible preaching brother in the Lord who is a very faithful minister of the gospel but he happens to be ministering in the denomination that is going the way of all flesh in many respects that is denying the sufficiency and the authority of the word of God and even in many respects denying the deity of Christ. And we were talking in particular about the homosexuality issue within his denomination which I know is a huge can of worms that will get into some other day but we were talking about that in his denomination how many people in his particular fellowship of churches are suggesting that the membership of the church and the offices of the church be opened up to practicing homosexuals. That's what many of the people in his denomination are suggesting and they're suggesting that to deny the membership of the church and the ministry of the church to practicing homosexuals is the equivalent of denying the membership and ministry of the church to African-Americans and members of other races. That's the logical conclusion that they are bridging there. What a lie. What an absolute lie that that is because when you look at scripture you can't find racism anywhere in the Bible it's just not there and you also can't find the acceptance of homosexuality as a morally viable behavior anywhere in the Bible either. In fact the biblical scholars who suggest that that is a viable behavior it's an acceptable behavior don't build that off of the Bible because they don't believe that the Bible's true. They recognize that the Bible teaches that and in fact this is what I would suggest to you. The basis upon which they are wanting homosexuals to become members of the church and fill the pulpits of their church is actually the same exact basis upon which elders and deacons of churches all across our land back in the 50s and 60s would stand at the back doors of the churches to keep members of other races and other undesirables out of the building. It's the same basis and here's what the basis is. The basis is I define for myself what is good and right and true or the culture, the prevailing world around me, the context in which I live they decide what is good and right and true and so what you get is that truth becomes something that is accomplishing something personally meaningful for you or preventing something that's undesirable for you and with that view of truth my friends truth becomes defined as nothing more than a 50% plus one vote. It's just majority rules. It's whatever achieves our own self-defined ends as individuals or as a corporate community as a whole. My friends when we buy into that view of truth it is a colossal disaster for us. It's a colossal disaster for us. It appears to be liberating but it actually brings bondage because it's a big fat lie it's building your life upon that but to imbibe that mentality of truth is to do exactly what Jesus is saying that you do in this passage when you imbibe the character of the father of lies, your father the devil. Listen to me I want you to think about this in your own personal life where the rubber kind of meets the road there. I want you to think about some of the most recent big decisions that you have made in your life. Maybe a big ethical decision you made at work or a large purchase that you had to make and I want you to ask yourself is that more consistent? Was that decision more consistent with the values and the truth as it is defined by the culture in which I live or was that decision more defined by the truth as my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ defines it? Be honest with yourself. And if it was more consistent with the father of lies than with the God and father of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is that something that you've acknowledged? Is that something that you have allowed to be brought into the light and exposed by Christ and that you've been able to repent from and find renewing grace in the gospel from and start to be led to put those types of decisions and those types of things to death and so that you might enjoy the freedom that comes from abiding in Christ because that's what Jesus is desiring for us. He's desiring that we would have that liberation, that freedom from the bondage of the shackles that our culture tells us is light and tells us is freedom but really is darkness and bondage. That's what he wants us to see here. That's the contrast that Jesus is making in this passage and it's not only a contrast between truth and falsehood it's a contrast between slavery and freedom. Does that make sense? And that's that issue of whether you are a slave or whether you are free again all depends upon who your father is. Upon who your father is because when God is your father then your life begins to take on an entirely different shape. It looks totally different in every manifestation of your life and your presuppositions about God and about life and about your understanding of the source of truth and the meaning of truth. They all begin to be informed by Jesus Christ, by who he is, by what he's done for you in the gospel. Many of you have heard that verse that we read a million times before where Jesus says that if you abide in my word you are truly my disciples and you will know the truth and the truth will set you free. So much of what the Christian life is about is about abiding. It's about resting in Christ, staying near to him abiding in him and his truth in his love and in his word. Jesus is going to bring this front and center in our life several more times as we explore John's gospel. You know when I first began to start dating Rebecca and I discovered the beauty of who she was as a person. I started to perk up my ears to what she had to say. I started to listen to what she loves and what she desires and what she wants to avoid in life and what her hopes and her dreams are and I took that to heart and many respects her desires became my desires and I made it an objective in my life to the degree that I could to seek to meet those desires because I loved her and I still do love her and that is what abiding in Christ looks like. Abiding in Christ is about tuning into what he says and then being shaped by that is about reading his word and listening to his word and thinking about his word and meditating upon his word and applying it to the specifics of your life rather than just leaving it as some kind of form of abstraction that doesn't really intersect with the reality of your life and then it's about speaking and living and thinking in ways that can form to actual the actual word of God. Maybe you're the kind of person that's a little bit skeptical about the validity of somebody else's word because you've had too many promises made to you that have been broken. You've seen especially those in power give their word to people and then break their promises and so if you are a little cynical when you hear someone make a promise to you and tell you that something is truth that's somewhat understandable. We're living in a society that still can't figure out what the meaning of is is. We're let down by our politicians and by our business leaders and by even leadership in the church all the time. We know what it's like to experience the brokenness of somebody else's word. It's affected you perhaps on the level of your own personal relationships or your marriage or your job or your finances and so many other respects and even to the degree that you have experienced people that are faithful to keep their word you know how unreliable your own word can be sometimes don't you. You know how difficult it is for you to keep your promises. I told you the soppy love story about Rebecca and me just a minute ago but oftentimes I'm not always faithful to my word to her. I sometimes break my word to her sometimes through just pure forgetfulness. Nothing intentionally malicious or anything. Sometimes it's because my priorities are not her priorities and sometimes it's just because I'm being passive aggressive but I know personally and I believe you know personally just how hard it is for you to keep your own word. So what makes Jesus's word any different from that? I'll give you two reasons. Christmas and Easter. Christmas and Easter are what make Jesus's word have a measure of weight to it that it carries a measure of truth to it because in the incarnation what we celebrate at Christmas where Jesus comes and he takes on human flesh and he's born in a pigsty and he dwells among us. What happened then is that truth became embodied. It took on a human form. It dwelt amongst people relationally so that people could personally identify with the truth and so when we identify with the truth that Jesus brings to bear upon our lives we're actually becoming more human not less we actually become more of who we were made to be and this means that when we embrace and identify with the truth as Jesus brings it to us you're not just affirming a set of creeds and propositions and a bunch of facts although you are doing that but you're actually embracing a person on a relational level. Let me make this just as clear as possible. Embracing the truth is about embracing the person of Jesus. That's what it's all about. It's about having his word flow through your veins and through your capillary so that whenever you are pressured or whenever you are pierced what flows out of you is the word and the truth of God and you get that because truth became embodied on Christmas morning one day two thousand years ago but here's the other thing the resurrection is what validates the truth it's what puts the stamp of approval on the truth because the fact that Jesus rose from the dead is the fundamental reason why Jesus's word can be trusted it's why we can trust His word because anybody can spout off a whole bunch nonsense and call that truth but the fact that Jesus brought the truth that was consistent with His Father lived a life that was authentic to that truth to the point of death was crucified for it and rose again actually validates all that He proclaimed it puts the stamp of approval on that truth because listen if Jesus did not rise from the dead then who cares what He said who cares what Jesus said we should just all gather up our collective wisdom as a culture and live out of that posture or we should just make up our own truth as we go along and that way my truth is as good as anybody else's so no one has the right to contradict me but see if Jesus actually was crucified for the sins of His people and He did raise again He validated everything He did on that cross and everything that He says then matters everything that He says is true and it's worthy of building our life upon in rising from the dead Jesus proved what He foreshadowed in verse 58 here in verse 58 Jesus says to these folks before Abraham was I am so he was revealing the truth and when he said that before Abraham was I am the people didn't pick up stones to throw at him because he was saying something that was dramatically awkward they knew exactly what he was claiming he was claiming to be God and that's why they wanted to kill him in rising from the dead Jesus validated everything that he said when he said to Dikadimus that for God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life in rising from the dead Jesus validated what he said when he said I am the way the truth in the life and no one comes to the Father but through me when he rose from the dead he put the stamp upon his Father's words when his Father said I will never leave you or forsake you when he rose from the dead he affirmed the prophet Zechariah's words when he said the Lord your God is in your midst a mighty one who will save he will rejoice over you with gladness he will quiet you with his love he will exalt over you with loud singing that is a promise it is true it's a promise to you in rising from the dead he affirmed what Paul would say when he would get to Romans 8 when he said these really important words he said you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear but you have received the spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry Abba Father see that is why the truth sets you free because you've been adopted into his family your father on this earth your biological father may be the biggest doofus that you know but Jesus here is saying that when you transfer your dependence from yourself over to him that your father always has your best interests in mind he's always pursuing your joy he's always rejoicing over you with singing and quieting you with his love all the time every day awake or sleep from cradle to grave that's what Jesus is doing for you that's what adoption looks like adoption means that you were born into a family where your future was probably hopeless and that would be true for your children more than likely and for your grandchildren and that parents came and they hand selected you to be their child and brought you into their family and made you their son or their daughter and gave you all of the benefits of belonging to that family that's what adoption looks like and that is what has happened to you in the gospel that's what is so liberating about it that's what's so beautiful about the gospel and that is why you Christian can go about living your life in a way that expresses that freedom rather than living life like an orphan where you're scared and fearful and hopeless and aimless and living life self-absorbed living life in bondage doing things to yourself and to your relationships that are destructive in order to give you some temporary sense of meaning and short-lived happiness see when the father came to me and made me his son he said Darren Stone you were bound for hell you were blind and you were deaf and you were bound for eternal pain and you had no idea the depth of your blindness and deafness and pain bound life that you were headed towards and I came to you I snatched you out of your father the devil's hands I brought you into my family and made you mine I took you away from the one whose purpose was to manipulate and to lie and to kill and steal and destroy and I have come to bring you life so that you would have life to the fullest and now you're my son and I make even your sufferings meaningful and work out for your own good I have come to give you a brand new identity a new name Christian member of my family all of the benefits in this life and in the future life that's what you get when you're adopted have you ever or lately began to even grasp the beauty of that that is what Jesus is doing for you in the gospel here he's giving you a whole new self definition of who you are it means that you've been set free from that bondage you've been set free to enjoy him see so much of our boredom of our just downright neither here nor their attitude towards Christianity stems from failing to recognize just what a beautiful thing happened to you that day you were adopted as his son or his daughter we just don't think about that but when you were adopted into his family he came and he he made you his child and he knew you were already messed up he didn't come and adopt you because you were beautiful he came to you and adopted you despite the ugliness of your life so when you go home today I want you to do this I want you to rest you need to rest and you need to kick up your heels and you need to take a moment and just take a few minutes to stop and think about what God was doing when he adopted you as his son or his daughter and what a beautiful treasure that is what great blessing and freedom that brings to you and what difference it makes in your life how it changes your life and then ask God to empower you to live with that sense of joy and that sense of faithfulness and that sense of freedom do that asking to make you a lover of the truth not as the world defines it but as he defines it because it's the truth that sets you free so you will enjoy a sense of Christ trusting truth living life and friends if you're here today maybe some of you are here and you just don't know where you are on this whole situation with Jesus you don't know where you fit or you just know that you don't believe them I want you to remember these words as well as you go today Jesus said that whoever comes to me I will not cast out if you come to him he will not cast you out he will adopt you as his son or his daughter so acknowledge your sin and acknowledge the Savior and come to him today that's an invitation let's pray Jesus you are beautiful beyond description you are the one who left the glory and the beauty of heaven to come down to our ghetto to dwell among us to embody the truth to take our sin in your flesh to rise again to validate it to bring us freedom to bring us hope to shower us with your love to give us an inheritance that will never perish or spoil or fade you've made us your sons and your daughters were children of a king were not orphans anymore help us to live like that help us to have that character running through our lives make that true not just of us as individuals but as a church so that our light would shine before men that they would see our good works and glorify our Father in heaven do that in each one of us here this morning for the sake of your glory and for the sake of our joy and for the sake of those who have yet to come to know you this we pray and the name of him who came such a distance for us our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ amen