You are Children of Your Father
{{Notes from 11-20-2001}}
Jesus went to Jerusalem for the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles. There he witnessed to who he was. Some opposed him openly; others believed in him. But, were they really his disciples?
John 8:31-38: (NKJV)
Then Jesus said to those Jews who believed Him, “If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” They answered Him, “We are Abraham’s descendants, and have never been in bondage to anyone. How can You say, ‘You will be made free’?” Jesus answered them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, whoever commits sin is a slave of sin. And a slave does not abide in the house forever, but a son abides forever. 36 Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed. “I know that you are Abraham’s descendants, but you seek to kill Me, because My word has no place in you. I speak what I have seen with My Father, and you do what you have seen with[a] your father.”
This passage can be difficult for us, but this morning we will try to get at the heart of it. It is about the difference between having the right information and having a right relationship with God through Christ. It is about the difference between intellectual belief and spiritual discipleship.
Whatever people may claim about themselves, there are really only two types of individuals in the world: Sinners and Saints. Of course, they may be other things as well. They may be teachers, nurses, dog-walkers, drug addicts, lawyers, or gas station attendants. They may be mothers, fathers, children, or adults. But, whatever else they are, everyone is either a Sinner or a Saint.
Now, there is only one difference between a Sinner and a Saint, only one thing that sets them apart from each other: a relationship with Jesus. Sinners and Saints are not different because one is sinful and the other is not. Both are guilty of falling short of the glory of God. Both are born separated from God. Both mess up on a regular basis.
No, they are only different because of their paternity. “Who’s your Daddy?” is more than just a logo on a t-shirt. Who your father is determines who you become.
Jesus says, “If you obey my teaching, you are really my disciples.” And, Jesus’ teaching is “you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” This teaching implies two things:
1) We need to know the truth (which we cannot know until God gives us faith to believe), and
2) We need to be set free. (which only God can do)
Jesus clarifies this for us in v. 34, where he teaches: because we sin, we are slaves to sin. We need freedom. We need a new identity. We need a new start. We need to be born again. We need a new Father. We need to be adopted.
“A slave does not belong to a family permanently, but a son belongs there forever.” The offer is not just to become a convert, but rather to become a son or a daughter instead of a slave; to belong to God permanently as his child, not just be part of a particular group here on earth.
Jesus never asked us to make converts. He isn’t interested in people who agree that truth is truth or can recite a creed. Jesus said to make disciples.
Jesus wants followers who live their lives according to how Jesus lived his. He wants believers who live out their belief. He knows that how we live says more about what we believe than what we say. [I confess this is a difficult thought for me sometimes, because I don’t always do it.]
All of us here may believe the right things about Jesus, we have all the right information. But, only those who are really Jesus’ disciples can truly call God, “Father.” The rest of us are only fooling ourselves. Rest assured; we aren’t fooling God. He knows who His children really are.
Cain and Abel both knew who God was, and both offered sacrifices to Him, but they were not both obedient worshipers. Jesus’ real disciples want to be obedient.
Judas walked with Jesus for three years, but he wasn’t eternally saved and turned from following the Lord for a pouch of silver. He turned aside. Jesus’ real disciples have the heart to follow no matter what.
Saul and David were both kings of Israel, but after Saul was rejected as king because his fear made him unfaithful, he looked upon David when he went in faith and courage to slay the giant, Goliath, and asked, “Whose son is this?” Jesus’ real disciples are children of God.
So, Jesus teaches us to obey his teaching: “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (We need to know the truth. We need to be set free.)
These Israelites, whom the Bible says believe in Jesus, become defensive and prideful. [Defensive. Prideful. Have we ever done that? When someone challenges us with something we lack, or something we need to change? Do we ever puff up, as if to say, “How dare you? Now, I know I’m not perfect, but I’m not as bad as all that!”? Are you kidding?? I did it yesterday! I did it the day before that!]
These “who believed in him” respond,
“We are descendants of Abraham,” (Who does he think he is talking to? We aren’t a bunch of nobodies! We are the people of God. How dare he suggest that we don’t know the truth! We’re special! Abraham is our father! We’ve been chosen! We’re better than those other people!)
“We have never been anybody’s slaves.” (Pride. Defensiveness. They keep us from seeing the truth. They even kept these believers from remembering their own history. We don’t need to be saved! We’ve never been slaves to anyone!)
Oh, but they had, hadn’t they? They had been slaves. Do you remember? They were slaves in Egypt for 400 years! But, in their pride and defensiveness, they “forgot” about that. They forgot their own story.
[I wonder if we ever forget things about ourselves. Do we ever forget our own story? Do we ever forget the muck and the mire? Do we ever forget where we would be without God? Addicted, conflicted, over-prescripted? Lost and hopeless, apart from God, slaves to sin bound for Hell. The property of Egypt. Do we ever forget that “there but for the grace of God…”? I wonder: Does our pride ever blind us to truth?]
In fact, this conversation takes places during the Feast of Tabernacles, doesn’t it? (John 7:2) Do you know what the purpose of this Feast was? Perhaps not, but that’s ok. I’m going to tell you. I, myself, had to look it up to remember.
The Feast of Tabernacles is a week-long gathering of all Israel, where they leave their houses and live in tents (booths). They cook over open fires, and basically live homeless. And, they do it every year in order to remember precisely what these people seem to have forgotten.
They do it so they will not forget that they had been slaves in Egypt. They do it so they will remember that God saved them. They do it so they can remind themselves and their children that the only thing that made them different from all those other Sinners is God’s adoption.
v. 39-41a:
They answered and said to Him, “Abraham is our father.” Jesus said to them, “If you were Abraham’s children, you would do the works of Abraham. But now you seek to kill Me, a Man who has told you the truth which I heard from God. Abraham did not do this. You do the deeds of your father.”
This is the second time in our passage that Jesus has mentioned their father in response to their claim that they are children of Abraham, implying that if they knew the truth they would understand what he was saying. If they knew they needed to be saved, they would understand that he is talking about salvation, the freedom of adoption as God’s children.
Jesus isn’t talking about Abraham. If Abraham truly was their father in the sense Jesus is talking about, they would believe, as Abraham believed.
So, they answer, v. 41a-42:
Then they said to Him, “We were not born of fornication; we have one Father—God.” Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love Me, for I proceeded forth and came from God; nor have I come of Myself, but He sent Me.
They become even more defensive. Jesus is trying to speak truth to them, but they cannot hear it because of their pride. They don’t just get offended and then try to listen. They choose to stay offended. They believe that Jesus is who he says he is, but they won’t listen to him!
[Uh-oh! Have we ever done that? Hold on! Would we ever say we believe, yet refuse to obey? I don’t mean to interfere with your life or anything, but some of this stuff might actually apply to us! If we aren’t careful, we might actually have to make some changes about ourselves. Get that guard back up! We may be in danger of allowing the Word of God to influence who we are. Watch out, right?
But wait! Answer the question: Would we ever say we believe in Jesus, yet refuse to listen to Jesus? I know I have. I have! I have claimed to believe in Jesus and then gone off and done whatever it was I wanted to do. Sometimes, I can even make it sound spiritual; I can even make it look holy.
Perhaps you want to say you’ve never done that? You’d like to say you have never turned a deaf ear to the Lord. You’d like to say you always listen. Well, so would I. But, don’t do it. I won’t believe you. No, we’ve done it more than we want to admit, haven’t we? Maybe we’re still doing it?! We say we believe, yet refuse to obey.]
These believers claim to be children of “God himself,…” In fact, they say they are “his true children.” But, they won’t listen to Jesus. So, Jesus speaks plainly…
v. 43-47:
Why do you not understand My speech? Because you are not able to listen to My word. You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it. But because I tell the truth, you do not believe Me. Which of you convicts Me of sin? And if I tell the truth, why do you not believe Me? He who is of God hears God’s words; therefore you do not hear, because you are not of God.”
Wow! Jesus really lets them have it. Remember, these are people whom the Bible says “believed in him.” These are church members (!), but they are not really Jesus’ disciples. They will not obey his teaching. They will not admit what Jesus requires all of his disciples to admit: We need to know the truth; We need to be set free.
Jesus says, “You are the children of your father, the Devil.” But, he isn’t saying that to be mean. He isn’t angry. He is saying it because it is true. He said it already when he stated, “everyone who sins is a slave to sin.” He supports his claim with the fact that they reject the truth of his teaching.
Remember, there are only two types of people in the world: Sinners and Saints, and it is only being God’s child through Jesus that makes us different.
The issue for them, and the issue for us, is not whether or not we know the Gospel; it is whether or not we are willing to obey the Gospel. Will we really be Jesus’ disciples? Will we listen to the truth, and let the truth set us free?
We need to know the truth: We all start as Sinners. We are all slaves to sin. We all have the Devil for our father and do the things that he does. We lie. We fill our hearts with pride. We murder in our minds. We are in bondage.
We need to be set free: God is offering us salvation, adoption as his child forever. If we want that freedom, if we want God to really be “our Father, who art in heaven,” then we must confess our slavery. We must know the truth that we are in bondage without Jesus, because without that truth we cannot be set free.
Listen, if we cannot confess our bondage, we can never really confess being saved from it. If there is no “bad news” then the “good news” is meaningless. And, the bad news is that we were all slaves to sin. The good news is that Jesus saves us from that slavery. We cannot embrace the good news and forget the bad news that makes the good news so good.
Now, we can defend ourselves if we want to. We can say, “Our father is Abraham,” or “God himself is the only Father we have,” We can say, “We have never been anybody’s slave.” But, if we claim to be better than anyone else because of something we bring to the table, then we are liars. If we claim to be without sin, then we cannot be saved from that sin. Only Jesus makes a Saint out of a Sinner.
We read Romans 8 earlier in our service, and the language of adoption in that passage proves that none of us start out as children of God.
Romans 3:9-12: “What then? Are we better than they? Not at all. For we have previously charged both Jews and Greeks that they are all under sin. As it is written: ‘There is none righteous, no, not one; There is none who understands; There is none who seeks after God. They have all turned aside; They have together become unprofitable; There is none who does good, no, not one.’”
James 1:17: “Every good and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father…”
Every Saint was once a Sinner, and without Jesus we still would be. Sometimes it seems like parts of us still are! We are a work in progress, but thanks be to God, we are in progress! A Saint is just a forgiven Sinner, an image of what God can do with nothing. Any good we Saints have is from God, and His Fatherhood defines who we are, if we are really his disciples. God’s adoption makes all the difference.
You see, I am not going to tell you whether you are a disciple today or not. For almost all of you, I don’t know. We often talk about God as our Father as if everyone we talk to is an obedient follower of Jesus, a real, adopted child of God.
Maybe we do this because we are hopeful. Maybe we do this because we know that God wants everybody to be saved, though not everybody is actually saved. Or, maybe we do it because we don’t want the responsibility of speaking truth into someone else’s life.
So, the truth is that some of us aren’t really disciples of Jesus.
Maybe we know the right things. Maybe we can sing the songs or pray in public. Perhaps we can even say “Lord, Lord, did we not do wonderful things in your name.” Maybe we even believe (Even the demons believe…), but we aren’t really disciples because we won’t listen to Jesus. We do “not belong to the family permanently.” We are only visitors in the community of faith and slaves to sin. And, in the end, Matthew 7 tells us that Jesus will say, “Depart from me, you who practice lawlessness, I never knew you.”
I like that. It gives me hope. If those who practice lawlessness are cast out, then those of us who practice obedience, those of us who try to listen (even imperfectly and with mistakes), those of us who want to embrace our adoption as God’s children and let it change who we are... Well, we’re going to be ok. God believes in us. God has plans for us. God calls us His child.
All right! So, if this message is talking to you this morning, if it is messing with your stuff as much as it is messing with mine, then you have a choice to make. You can be offended, or you can know the truth and be set free.
I don’t know if you realize it or not, but you aren’t here (reading this) on accident. You are called to be here this morning. Some of us are here because we are disciples of Jesus who want to be better disciples of Jesus. Some of us are here because God is inviting us to become His children. I don’t know which you are.
If you aren’t really a disciple of Jesus, if you haven’t been trying to follow him and obey his teaching, then God is offering you a new legacy. He is offering you freedom. He is offering you himself.
If you want to get offended by that because you don’t want to admit that you are a Sinner, then I can’t do anything more for you than I have done. That’s your choice. It’s the wrong choice, and it breaks God’s heart, but it’s your choice.
But… But, it isn’t the only choice. Jesus also tells us, “If the Son sets you free, then you will be really free.” Do you want to be really free today? Not just free to do what you want to do, but free to be who God created you to be, who he died for you to become... Start really following Jesus. Obey the teaching of Jesus. Love Jesus. Listen to Jesus. Become a real disciple. Be changed, born again. Get adopted by God.
Confess that the truth you know is not just in your mind, but in your heart and life. Become a real disciple of Jesus. Pray, and move from having the right information to having a right relationship with God through Jesus.
Every one of us in this room can be a real disciple of Jesus, but head-knowledge won’t make it happen. We need a transformation, a change in who we are based on a change in who our father is. We need an adoption. We need to go from slave to son, from damned to daughter, from lost to found, from Sinner to Saint.
And, what if you are already a real disciple of Jesus? What if you have been trying to listen to Jesus? Maybe you haven’t done a good job of it lately. Maybe you feel unworthy of the name, “Disciple.” Maybe you’ve been doing just fine. I don’t know. What I do know is that this morning, we disciples are here to remember.
Jesus went to Jerusalem for the Feast of Tabernacles, the time when the Jews gathered to remember all the junk in their story. They remembered their bondage. They remembered the deliverance. They remembered their rebellion in the wilderness and their entrance into the Promised Land.
Perhaps, today is your Feast of Tabernacles; your time to remember. We must remember why we live in these fleshly tents and booths. We must never forget that we were in bondage, God’s enemies, lost children of the devil, and that God alone chose us and set us free.
We must continue obey the teaching of Jesus. We must continue to know the truth. And, the truth will continue to set us free, to bring us to new heights of understanding and from glory to glory.
We must remember, so that we will continue to listen. I’ve been a Christian for 27 years, 8 months, and a couple of days. If I died today, I’d still go to Hell if it weren’t for Jesus. I need God’s adoption as much now as I ever have.
I need to remember that. As I try to live my life as a child of my heavenly father, I need to remember that I was a slave to sin and God set me free. I was God’s enemy and He chose me to be His child. I need to remember that only Jesus can turn a Sinner into a Saint.
Jesus went to Jerusalem for the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles. There he witnessed to who he was. Some opposed him openly; others believed in him. But, were they really his disciples?
John 8:31-38: (NKJV)
Then Jesus said to those Jews who believed Him, “If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” They answered Him, “We are Abraham’s descendants, and have never been in bondage to anyone. How can You say, ‘You will be made free’?” Jesus answered them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, whoever commits sin is a slave of sin. And a slave does not abide in the house forever, but a son abides forever. 36 Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed. “I know that you are Abraham’s descendants, but you seek to kill Me, because My word has no place in you. I speak what I have seen with My Father, and you do what you have seen with[a] your father.”
This passage can be difficult for us, but this morning we will try to get at the heart of it. It is about the difference between having the right information and having a right relationship with God through Christ. It is about the difference between intellectual belief and spiritual discipleship.
Whatever people may claim about themselves, there are really only two types of individuals in the world: Sinners and Saints. Of course, they may be other things as well. They may be teachers, nurses, dog-walkers, drug addicts, lawyers, or gas station attendants. They may be mothers, fathers, children, or adults. But, whatever else they are, everyone is either a Sinner or a Saint.
Now, there is only one difference between a Sinner and a Saint, only one thing that sets them apart from each other: a relationship with Jesus. Sinners and Saints are not different because one is sinful and the other is not. Both are guilty of falling short of the glory of God. Both are born separated from God. Both mess up on a regular basis.
No, they are only different because of their paternity. “Who’s your Daddy?” is more than just a logo on a t-shirt. Who your father is determines who you become.
Jesus says, “If you obey my teaching, you are really my disciples.” And, Jesus’ teaching is “you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” This teaching implies two things:
1) We need to know the truth (which we cannot know until God gives us faith to believe), and
2) We need to be set free. (which only God can do)
Jesus clarifies this for us in v. 34, where he teaches: because we sin, we are slaves to sin. We need freedom. We need a new identity. We need a new start. We need to be born again. We need a new Father. We need to be adopted.
“A slave does not belong to a family permanently, but a son belongs there forever.” The offer is not just to become a convert, but rather to become a son or a daughter instead of a slave; to belong to God permanently as his child, not just be part of a particular group here on earth.
Jesus never asked us to make converts. He isn’t interested in people who agree that truth is truth or can recite a creed. Jesus said to make disciples.
Jesus wants followers who live their lives according to how Jesus lived his. He wants believers who live out their belief. He knows that how we live says more about what we believe than what we say. [I confess this is a difficult thought for me sometimes, because I don’t always do it.]
All of us here may believe the right things about Jesus, we have all the right information. But, only those who are really Jesus’ disciples can truly call God, “Father.” The rest of us are only fooling ourselves. Rest assured; we aren’t fooling God. He knows who His children really are.
Cain and Abel both knew who God was, and both offered sacrifices to Him, but they were not both obedient worshipers. Jesus’ real disciples want to be obedient.
Judas walked with Jesus for three years, but he wasn’t eternally saved and turned from following the Lord for a pouch of silver. He turned aside. Jesus’ real disciples have the heart to follow no matter what.
Saul and David were both kings of Israel, but after Saul was rejected as king because his fear made him unfaithful, he looked upon David when he went in faith and courage to slay the giant, Goliath, and asked, “Whose son is this?” Jesus’ real disciples are children of God.
So, Jesus teaches us to obey his teaching: “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (We need to know the truth. We need to be set free.)
These Israelites, whom the Bible says believe in Jesus, become defensive and prideful. [Defensive. Prideful. Have we ever done that? When someone challenges us with something we lack, or something we need to change? Do we ever puff up, as if to say, “How dare you? Now, I know I’m not perfect, but I’m not as bad as all that!”? Are you kidding?? I did it yesterday! I did it the day before that!]
These “who believed in him” respond,
“We are descendants of Abraham,” (Who does he think he is talking to? We aren’t a bunch of nobodies! We are the people of God. How dare he suggest that we don’t know the truth! We’re special! Abraham is our father! We’ve been chosen! We’re better than those other people!)
“We have never been anybody’s slaves.” (Pride. Defensiveness. They keep us from seeing the truth. They even kept these believers from remembering their own history. We don’t need to be saved! We’ve never been slaves to anyone!)
Oh, but they had, hadn’t they? They had been slaves. Do you remember? They were slaves in Egypt for 400 years! But, in their pride and defensiveness, they “forgot” about that. They forgot their own story.
[I wonder if we ever forget things about ourselves. Do we ever forget our own story? Do we ever forget the muck and the mire? Do we ever forget where we would be without God? Addicted, conflicted, over-prescripted? Lost and hopeless, apart from God, slaves to sin bound for Hell. The property of Egypt. Do we ever forget that “there but for the grace of God…”? I wonder: Does our pride ever blind us to truth?]
In fact, this conversation takes places during the Feast of Tabernacles, doesn’t it? (John 7:2) Do you know what the purpose of this Feast was? Perhaps not, but that’s ok. I’m going to tell you. I, myself, had to look it up to remember.
The Feast of Tabernacles is a week-long gathering of all Israel, where they leave their houses and live in tents (booths). They cook over open fires, and basically live homeless. And, they do it every year in order to remember precisely what these people seem to have forgotten.
They do it so they will not forget that they had been slaves in Egypt. They do it so they will remember that God saved them. They do it so they can remind themselves and their children that the only thing that made them different from all those other Sinners is God’s adoption.
v. 39-41a:
They answered and said to Him, “Abraham is our father.” Jesus said to them, “If you were Abraham’s children, you would do the works of Abraham. But now you seek to kill Me, a Man who has told you the truth which I heard from God. Abraham did not do this. You do the deeds of your father.”
This is the second time in our passage that Jesus has mentioned their father in response to their claim that they are children of Abraham, implying that if they knew the truth they would understand what he was saying. If they knew they needed to be saved, they would understand that he is talking about salvation, the freedom of adoption as God’s children.
Jesus isn’t talking about Abraham. If Abraham truly was their father in the sense Jesus is talking about, they would believe, as Abraham believed.
So, they answer, v. 41a-42:
Then they said to Him, “We were not born of fornication; we have one Father—God.” Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love Me, for I proceeded forth and came from God; nor have I come of Myself, but He sent Me.
They become even more defensive. Jesus is trying to speak truth to them, but they cannot hear it because of their pride. They don’t just get offended and then try to listen. They choose to stay offended. They believe that Jesus is who he says he is, but they won’t listen to him!
[Uh-oh! Have we ever done that? Hold on! Would we ever say we believe, yet refuse to obey? I don’t mean to interfere with your life or anything, but some of this stuff might actually apply to us! If we aren’t careful, we might actually have to make some changes about ourselves. Get that guard back up! We may be in danger of allowing the Word of God to influence who we are. Watch out, right?
But wait! Answer the question: Would we ever say we believe in Jesus, yet refuse to listen to Jesus? I know I have. I have! I have claimed to believe in Jesus and then gone off and done whatever it was I wanted to do. Sometimes, I can even make it sound spiritual; I can even make it look holy.
Perhaps you want to say you’ve never done that? You’d like to say you have never turned a deaf ear to the Lord. You’d like to say you always listen. Well, so would I. But, don’t do it. I won’t believe you. No, we’ve done it more than we want to admit, haven’t we? Maybe we’re still doing it?! We say we believe, yet refuse to obey.]
These believers claim to be children of “God himself,…” In fact, they say they are “his true children.” But, they won’t listen to Jesus. So, Jesus speaks plainly…
v. 43-47:
Why do you not understand My speech? Because you are not able to listen to My word. You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it. But because I tell the truth, you do not believe Me. Which of you convicts Me of sin? And if I tell the truth, why do you not believe Me? He who is of God hears God’s words; therefore you do not hear, because you are not of God.”
Wow! Jesus really lets them have it. Remember, these are people whom the Bible says “believed in him.” These are church members (!), but they are not really Jesus’ disciples. They will not obey his teaching. They will not admit what Jesus requires all of his disciples to admit: We need to know the truth; We need to be set free.
Jesus says, “You are the children of your father, the Devil.” But, he isn’t saying that to be mean. He isn’t angry. He is saying it because it is true. He said it already when he stated, “everyone who sins is a slave to sin.” He supports his claim with the fact that they reject the truth of his teaching.
Remember, there are only two types of people in the world: Sinners and Saints, and it is only being God’s child through Jesus that makes us different.
The issue for them, and the issue for us, is not whether or not we know the Gospel; it is whether or not we are willing to obey the Gospel. Will we really be Jesus’ disciples? Will we listen to the truth, and let the truth set us free?
We need to know the truth: We all start as Sinners. We are all slaves to sin. We all have the Devil for our father and do the things that he does. We lie. We fill our hearts with pride. We murder in our minds. We are in bondage.
We need to be set free: God is offering us salvation, adoption as his child forever. If we want that freedom, if we want God to really be “our Father, who art in heaven,” then we must confess our slavery. We must know the truth that we are in bondage without Jesus, because without that truth we cannot be set free.
Listen, if we cannot confess our bondage, we can never really confess being saved from it. If there is no “bad news” then the “good news” is meaningless. And, the bad news is that we were all slaves to sin. The good news is that Jesus saves us from that slavery. We cannot embrace the good news and forget the bad news that makes the good news so good.
Now, we can defend ourselves if we want to. We can say, “Our father is Abraham,” or “God himself is the only Father we have,” We can say, “We have never been anybody’s slave.” But, if we claim to be better than anyone else because of something we bring to the table, then we are liars. If we claim to be without sin, then we cannot be saved from that sin. Only Jesus makes a Saint out of a Sinner.
We read Romans 8 earlier in our service, and the language of adoption in that passage proves that none of us start out as children of God.
Romans 3:9-12: “What then? Are we better than they? Not at all. For we have previously charged both Jews and Greeks that they are all under sin. As it is written: ‘There is none righteous, no, not one; There is none who understands; There is none who seeks after God. They have all turned aside; They have together become unprofitable; There is none who does good, no, not one.’”
James 1:17: “Every good and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father…”
Every Saint was once a Sinner, and without Jesus we still would be. Sometimes it seems like parts of us still are! We are a work in progress, but thanks be to God, we are in progress! A Saint is just a forgiven Sinner, an image of what God can do with nothing. Any good we Saints have is from God, and His Fatherhood defines who we are, if we are really his disciples. God’s adoption makes all the difference.
You see, I am not going to tell you whether you are a disciple today or not. For almost all of you, I don’t know. We often talk about God as our Father as if everyone we talk to is an obedient follower of Jesus, a real, adopted child of God.
Maybe we do this because we are hopeful. Maybe we do this because we know that God wants everybody to be saved, though not everybody is actually saved. Or, maybe we do it because we don’t want the responsibility of speaking truth into someone else’s life.
So, the truth is that some of us aren’t really disciples of Jesus.
Maybe we know the right things. Maybe we can sing the songs or pray in public. Perhaps we can even say “Lord, Lord, did we not do wonderful things in your name.” Maybe we even believe (Even the demons believe…), but we aren’t really disciples because we won’t listen to Jesus. We do “not belong to the family permanently.” We are only visitors in the community of faith and slaves to sin. And, in the end, Matthew 7 tells us that Jesus will say, “Depart from me, you who practice lawlessness, I never knew you.”
I like that. It gives me hope. If those who practice lawlessness are cast out, then those of us who practice obedience, those of us who try to listen (even imperfectly and with mistakes), those of us who want to embrace our adoption as God’s children and let it change who we are... Well, we’re going to be ok. God believes in us. God has plans for us. God calls us His child.
All right! So, if this message is talking to you this morning, if it is messing with your stuff as much as it is messing with mine, then you have a choice to make. You can be offended, or you can know the truth and be set free.
I don’t know if you realize it or not, but you aren’t here (reading this) on accident. You are called to be here this morning. Some of us are here because we are disciples of Jesus who want to be better disciples of Jesus. Some of us are here because God is inviting us to become His children. I don’t know which you are.
If you aren’t really a disciple of Jesus, if you haven’t been trying to follow him and obey his teaching, then God is offering you a new legacy. He is offering you freedom. He is offering you himself.
If you want to get offended by that because you don’t want to admit that you are a Sinner, then I can’t do anything more for you than I have done. That’s your choice. It’s the wrong choice, and it breaks God’s heart, but it’s your choice.
But… But, it isn’t the only choice. Jesus also tells us, “If the Son sets you free, then you will be really free.” Do you want to be really free today? Not just free to do what you want to do, but free to be who God created you to be, who he died for you to become... Start really following Jesus. Obey the teaching of Jesus. Love Jesus. Listen to Jesus. Become a real disciple. Be changed, born again. Get adopted by God.
Confess that the truth you know is not just in your mind, but in your heart and life. Become a real disciple of Jesus. Pray, and move from having the right information to having a right relationship with God through Jesus.
Every one of us in this room can be a real disciple of Jesus, but head-knowledge won’t make it happen. We need a transformation, a change in who we are based on a change in who our father is. We need an adoption. We need to go from slave to son, from damned to daughter, from lost to found, from Sinner to Saint.
And, what if you are already a real disciple of Jesus? What if you have been trying to listen to Jesus? Maybe you haven’t done a good job of it lately. Maybe you feel unworthy of the name, “Disciple.” Maybe you’ve been doing just fine. I don’t know. What I do know is that this morning, we disciples are here to remember.
Jesus went to Jerusalem for the Feast of Tabernacles, the time when the Jews gathered to remember all the junk in their story. They remembered their bondage. They remembered the deliverance. They remembered their rebellion in the wilderness and their entrance into the Promised Land.
Perhaps, today is your Feast of Tabernacles; your time to remember. We must remember why we live in these fleshly tents and booths. We must never forget that we were in bondage, God’s enemies, lost children of the devil, and that God alone chose us and set us free.
We must continue obey the teaching of Jesus. We must continue to know the truth. And, the truth will continue to set us free, to bring us to new heights of understanding and from glory to glory.
We must remember, so that we will continue to listen. I’ve been a Christian for 27 years, 8 months, and a couple of days. If I died today, I’d still go to Hell if it weren’t for Jesus. I need God’s adoption as much now as I ever have.
I need to remember that. As I try to live my life as a child of my heavenly father, I need to remember that I was a slave to sin and God set me free. I was God’s enemy and He chose me to be His child. I need to remember that only Jesus can turn a Sinner into a Saint.
Comments