2024-02-04AM- Behold the Lamb of God

In this transcription, Jesus speaks to the Jews about the possibility of being truly free if they know the truth. He tells them that anyone who commits sin is a servant of sin and that only through the Son can they be free. Jesus challenges their perception of freedom, stating that it is not about physical restraints or self-governance, but rather about being freed from personal sin. This message applies to people today who may mistake personal liberties or independence as true freedom. The story of the man with an unclean spirit illustrates that true freedom cannot be defined by the ability to come and go as one pleases, but rather by being freed from the power of sin. We'll get it figured out here in a minute. John chapter 8. Would you read with me? John chapter 8. And let's begin reading in verse 31. Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed. And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. They answered him, We be Abraham's seed, and were never in bondage to any man. How sayest thou ye shall be made free? Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin. And the servant abideth not in the house forever, but the Son abideth ever. If the Son, therefore, shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed. Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin. That's not a saying that came up, dreamed up by a philosopher. That was Jesus Christ. He said it. Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin. And the servant abideth not in the house forever, but the Son abideth ever. If the Son, therefore, shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed. Lord, thank You so much for our gathering today. Thank You for everyone that is here. You're a prayer-answering God, and I thank You so much for it. Lord, I present this vessel before You today and ask that You would use it. And pray that You will anoint this vessel to preach Your Word, and I pray You'll have Your way in the remainder of this service. In Jesus' precious name, Amen. Amen. I want to try to preach today from the concept that Jesus is delivering here in these few verses that we read. He tells them that there's a possibility that if you know truth, you can be free. And He says there in verse 36 that if the Son, the Son of God, Jesus Himself, therefore, shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed. And that literally means that you will be really free. Truly, certainly, you will be free if the Son sets you free. In fact, in a lexicon that I looked it up, it said that to be free indeed is in opposition to what is pretended to be free. Not mistaken, but pretending to be free. So you can be free indeed through the Son. So I want to try to preach this for a message today, just for a title, just freedom. Freedom. Something that God Himself offers to every individual is freedom. Now, in our minds, we typically will perceive freedom to be that ability to act, to plan our lives, to make decisions for our future without the interference or restraint of someone else. That's what we have come to learn. That's what we've learned freedom to be. No restraint. I get to make my decisions. I decide what I do. I decide what the future holds for me. Nobody is allowed to hold me back. And if I have that, I'm free. I'm free. And so we, as American citizens, we have this presumption of personal liberty. It's something that we believe that we have. It is something that we trust that we have. It's an expectation for us that we have a personal freedom. And we all might not be able to quote the Constitution per se, but we know that our Constitution does insure us to certain freedoms. And we count ourselves to be a free people. And if the government does not intrude upon decisions that we make, we consider ourselves to be a free people. Now, understandably, we complain sometimes about what we perceive coming down from government leaders, that they make decisions sometimes that we say, I think they're trying to infringe on my rights. We recognize sometimes that there are decisions that are made by these lawmakers that lead toward the weakening of our personal freedoms. And we start to get voicive about it. We start getting loud about it. We start writing letters. We start saying this isn't going to be because we're Americans and we're a free people. We also understand that there are places in this world that do not enjoy the freedoms that we do. Citizens of other countries that are under the control of dictators, who they are the ones who control the population using different means that they have. And one unkind word toward the leader of that nation just might result in prosecution. And if your ideas get voiced in the public opposing to the ideas of the government, it just might land you in prison. It just might cost you your life. And rightfully so, we pity those who live under such conditions like that because as citizens of the United States of America, we understand our freedoms and we wish that everybody else could be free just like we are. And when we get to the place that there's a possibility that there might be a change in our personal liberties, then we look to somebody, a political figure, we rally around somebody that we believe is going to stand up for our rights and preserve our freedoms because we are accustomed to being a free people. Now in my text there in John 8, Jesus is speaking to Jewish Pharisees there. You'll find that back in verse 13, this crowd that He is addressing here. And these Pharisees get offended at Jesus' suggestion that they're not free. What do you mean we're not free? He told them that there is a truth that you can know that can make you free. And they declared themselves to be proud descendants of that great patriarch Abraham. And they said they were insistent that we have never been in bondage to anybody. We're a free people. And you're telling us that we need something that makes us free? Now they became pretty bold to Jesus right there. And they just came right back at Him. But it wasn't true. I mean, the nation of Israel itself was born in slavery. They were accustomed to bondage over the years. There were different times that they fell prey to the Assyrians. They were under bondage to the Babylonians. The Persians had control over them. The Greeks had control over them. And even at the time of our reading, they were under Roman occupation. I mean, anybody could have looked at them and said, Are you out of your mind? What do you mean we've never been in bondage? Now they might have had a certain level of self-governance under Roman rule. Brother Michael's been talking about that the last few Sundays in Sunday school. But they certainly could not honestly be called a free people. So Jesus could have looked right back at them and easily laid them down with a quick history lesson. You know better than this. But instead, He turned to the root of the problem. He turned to them and let them know that their problem was not physical restraints. Their problem was not that they were under the constant threat of being confined or being imprisoned. The problem that they had, which every one of them were in desperate need of freedom, was of personal sin. And Jesus, when He spoke to them, He spoke with clarity. His words were piercing, for it was the Word of God which is quick and it's powerful. It came across as sharper than any two-edged sword. There in their hearts He began to divide between the soul and the spirit, between the joints and the marrow. And He told them, whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin. If you have sin in your life, you can proclaim freedom all that you want to. You can brag about citizenship and you can say where you go and what you do. But if sin is in your life, the Bible says, Jesus said that whosoever committeth sin becomes the servant to that sin. And Jesus was offering these men opportunity to be freed from sin through knowledge of truth. Now, there's a lot of people today, many people today have the same perception in their own lives. I live in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Good old red, white and blue. This is the United States of America and we bow to no other nation. We are a free people. I've got rights to free speech. I've got the right to bear arms. I've got the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And simply having the idea that you and I can come and go as we please, it's often mistaken for freedom. The Gospel of Mark chapter 5 begins in verse 1. Jesus has just calmed the storm in chapter 4. And that ship pulls right up to the shore of the country of the Gadarenes. And Jesus steps out of that ship and is immediately met by a man described in the Bible as having an unclean spirit. Now listen how the Bible describes this man. No man could bind him. No, not with chains. You see, when his fellow countrymen decided that they were going to gain control over this man, he escaped. Their shackles were broken, their chains and their fetters were thrown aside and this man could not be restrained. And he would be considered free. Luke chapter 8 tells this same story and it reveals to us that this man could not be confined to any one house. The Bible says that he wandered through the wilderness. He went up into the mountains. And there were times that he spent living in a graveyard. Luke chapter 8 verse 27 says that this man wore no clothes. Mark chapter 5 says that night and day he was out and about crying. Now, this doesn't mean that everywhere he went that he wept and he was a sad man. What this literally means was not a sad sobbing of somebody who's overcome with sorrow, but what it meant was this man got loud. Day and night he was yelling out. His rantings could be heard throughout the countryside because he would burst out with his voice loud and strong. Matthew chapter 5 and verse 4 tells us that neither could any man tame him. Now, I just described to you what many people today would call freedom. This man could boast, I cannot be imprisoned. No one, nothing will confine my movement in this. He could say, I'm free. I'm free. He could say, I move about as I want to. There is no need to stay in one place. I don't have to be confined to one house. I don't have to be confined to one relationship. What others call that instability, I call it independence. I'm a free man. I am not limited to where I go. I'm not limited to what I want to do and when I want to do it. Freedom. This man, the Bible says, wore no clothes. He could declare himself to be free from the expectations of anyone else around him. He could say, I'm not bound by those old prudish and puritanical moral levels of modesty. I make my own decisions. I am free to wear what I want, as much as I want, or as little as I want. Freedom. Freedom. And through the day and through the night, his speech was unhindered. He said what he wanted. He said it as loud as he wanted. There was no one that would tell this man, the way you're talking is inappropriate. And it came to the place that his opinions, he could declare anything that he wanted, whenever he wanted, unhindered by what anybody else said. Freedom is what people would say. That's what that is. And the Bible says, neither could any man tame him. Nobody's got authority over this man. Nobody restrains my appetite. Nobody holds me back from my personal desires, no matter what they be. Nobody is going to tell me how to live. Nobody is going to show me the ways of righteousness. Nobody is going to expect me to live according to society's normals. Nobody is going to hold me to somebody else's expectations. He just might declare, all them self-righteous hypocrites ain't telling me how to live. And this is what many people would define today as freedom. Now, he could boast all he wanted to about being free from confinement. He could talk all he wanted to that I'm not bound by rules. There's no regulations that can hold me down. He could brag about his ability to make his own decisions without everybody else's self-righteous opinions of him. When he decided that he might be inclined to describe himself as independent, as unhindered, his problem was not outward, but it was deep down inside of him. There was something that was going terribly wrong inside of this man. And the Bible says that this man, inside of him, he had an unclean spirit. And no matter how free he was to move about, no matter how unhindered was his mobility, his ideas of freedom, his real problem existed inside of him. Today, many people boast about this kind of freedom. I'm my own man. I make my own decisions. I'm not bound by any person. I'm not bound by any ideas that disagree with my own. I am the master of my own destiny. But when the Bible tells us that Jesus came to preach deliverance to the captives, He was not interested necessarily in those who had had their civil liberties infringed upon. He came to deal with that which every man is held captive and that is his own sin. Jesus said, Whosoever committed sin is the servant of sin. And when Jesus Christ descended from heaven, the Bible says He took not on Him the nature of angels, but God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh. John would write later, He that committed sin is of the devil. So, when doctrines come out and tell you, you must sin every day. And if you say you don't, you're a joke and a liar. Somebody says we'll never get over sinning. But my Bible says, Whosoever committed sin is the servant of sin. And my Bible says, He that committed sin is of the devil. For the devil sinned from the beginning. But for this purpose, the Son of Man, the Son of God was manifested that He might destroy the works of the devil. And Paul told Timothy, this is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, to set people free. Now, I'll tell you, it's not really a challenge today to really get people to understand they sinned. It seems like people anymore are just simply proud of it. I've been told, well, I was raised around military, and boy, you know, that's why my language is so salty. And I look back and say, well, we ain't in the military around here, so that kind of language doesn't fly. It's not difficult to convince people of sin in their lives. Just a cursory glance at the Scriptures show to us what sin is and contrast it against the life of an individual, we can show that people are sinners. Our challenge lies in this. It's convincing people that they are in a bondage from which only Jesus Christ can provide freedom. Back in Mark 5, where I was referencing that man who might have declared himself, I'm free. They all live down there in the town and they're held under certain laws. And they've got restrictions on them. They've got family members who tell them they can't do this. I'm out here in the wilderness. I'm out here in the mountains. I can wander through the graveyard if I want to. I can say what I want. I can get dressed if I want. I cannot get dressed if I don't want to. I can do the things that I want. Nobody's got anything on me. But there was an opportunity that came to that man, for when Jesus stepped off of that ship onto that shore, here's what the Bible says, that man ran to Jesus. That man who had all of His freedom. That man which no man could tame. That man which nobody could hold back. That man who said whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted, when he came face to face with the express image of God. The Bible says that he ran to Jesus and he worshipped Him. Now, this is brand new to this man. I mean, this is all of a sudden, you talk about somebody that's going to put limitations on you, it'll be God. You talk about somebody that'll get things under control. It'll be the Son of God. And this independent man, this man who may have declared himself to be free, runs to Jesus, worships, bows down before Jesus. You know why? You might ask him and he'd say, I'm ready for a change. I'm ready for a change. The graveyard ain't all it's cracked up to be. The mountains, it's not all. My language that I use freely, that's not getting me anywhere. Me boasting about being free, it's really not gotten me anywhere. But what he recognized was things that might be considered demonstrations of freedom were actually the very things that held his soul bound. And Jesus manifested to that man that day the same thing He was trying to get across to those Jewish leaders in that day. If the Son, therefore, shall make you free, you shall be free indeed. Today, there's no difference. The power of God to save from sin is as strong and as good as it's ever been. And every soul that is in need of freedom, you might say there's no change. There's no shackles. I get to go and come as I please. Nobody's limiting me in what I do. But Jesus said, whosoever therefore committed sin is a slave. He is a servant to that sin. And let me tell you this, freedom from righteousness is no freedom at all. But Peter said it's actually what you're really doing is surrendering true freedom to the bondage of sin. Vanity. Lust. Filthiness of the flesh. Man tries to convince Him that is the definition of freedom. When all along, He is the servant of corruption, Peter wrote in 2 Peter 2. Brother Austin, would you come to the piano please? John 8, verse 32. We read it. And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. Jesus saves. Jesus liberates. Jesus sets people free from their own sin. Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. John 14, verse 6, Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the liar. The truth. Jesus Christ is the only thing that can make an individual free. And if you would know the truth, you can truly be free. Would you stand with me? God, I thank You. Freedom is available to replace the faux freedom that people believe they have today. God, I trust You. Lord, there is no one like You. I'm praying today that You'll have Your way in this altar service. You know the needs that exist right here in this house. You know, God, You know, who feels free and then all of a sudden realizes it's not freedom. So I pray today somebody gets set free in the name of Jesus. Amen. I'll make this altar call. I'll make this altar call. Have you had a mistaken perception of what freedom really is? Have you thought that just simply because nobody tells me what to do, that's freedom? Jesus said that's not freedom. But Jesus said I can give you freedom. I can give you freedom. The only begotten Son of God. God gave this Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. And so today, oh, we've got a place for praying. We've got a time for praying. We've got a Savior that answers prayer. And I want to make this invitation. Somebody realize that sin does have dominion over you? Well, I never thought about it like that. I'm just telling you what Jesus said. But God will get rid of it for you. God will get rid of the sin. Wash it all away. You say, well, maybe I've got to do this first. No, He's already done it. God is holy. Man is separated from God because of his sin.