The message given in the United Methodist churches of the Wheatland Parish on Sunday morning, March 19, 2023. The Bible verses used are John 8:31-36.
One of the things Americans
cherish most is our freedom. And that’s a good thing, of course.
People should be free. God wants us to be free. That’s why God
created us the way He did, with the ability to think for ourselves and to make
choices about how to live our lives. God wants us to live our lives with
freedom.
But as Christians, we need to be careful about that freedom
and how we exercise it. Because society has a very different view of
freedom than we should have as Christian. Society often claims that
“freedom” means “I can do whatever I want to.” And in fact, society often
takes that further, saying that freedom means “I can do whatever I want to with
no consequences.” And these days, we see people taking it further still,
saying that freedom means “I can do whatever I want regardless of the law and
regardless of how many people might be hurt.” That’s not freedom.
That’s anarchy. And you cannot find a society that fell into anarchy and
retained its freedom.
For a Christian, freedom does not mean “I can do whatever I
want to.” For a Christian, freedom means “I can do whatever God wants me
to do.” Freedom means living a life free from slavery to sin.
In our Bible reading for today, Jesus said, “The truth
shall set you free.” The truth, like freedom, has become kind of a
floating concept these days. Society tells us that there is no such thing
as “the truth”. We all have our truth. I have my truth, and you
have your truth. You have no right to tell me my truth is not true,
because it’s my truth. Even if “my truth” has no basis in reality, you
still have to accept it and respect it, because it’s “my truth”.
That’s not a Biblical concept. Jesus believed there
is “the truth”. In fact, Jesus said he is the truth. That’s why the
truth sets us free--because Jesus is the truth, and it’s Jesus who sets us
free.
“The truth shall set you free” is quoted so much it has
almost become a cliché. It’s a true statement, of course. But to
get the full meaning of what Jesus is saying, we need to look at the full
quote. Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my
disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you
free.”
So, the truth will only set us free if we know the
truth. We know the truth by being Jesus’ disciples. And we can only
be Jesus’ disciples if we hold to Jesus’ teaching. So, if we want to
truly be set free, we need to hold to the teaching of Jesus.
Jesus made that point a second time in this reading.
He said, “Everyone who sins is a slave to sin.” The only way we can avoid
being slaves to sin is to be set free from our slavery to sin by Jesus.
We are set free from that slavery by holding to the teaching of Jesus, by
living our lives the way Jesus told us to.
What are those teachings? Some would reduce it to a
single word: “love”. The teaching of Jesus is love.
Therefore, if we always act with love, we will hold to Jesus’ teaching, we will
be Jesus’ disciples, and we will be set free from the slavery of sin.
There’s truth in that of course. Jesus did tell us to
love. Love the Lord our God. Love our neighbors as ourselves.
Love our enemies. It’s absolutely true that love is an important part of
the teaching of Jesus.
The trouble is that, like truth, love has also become a
floating concept these days. We’re told that, if we cite the Bible and
say that certain behaviors are wrong, we’re being too judgmental and not
showing love. We’re told that, if we don’t accept behaviors that violate
God’s teaching, as laid out in the Bible, then we’re using the Bible as a
weapon, and not showing love. And in fact, we’re told that it’s not
enough to accept those behaviors, we need to applaud them. And again, if
we don’t, we’re showing hate, and not love.
That is not what Jesus said. You cannot find a place
in the Bible where Jesus embraced an “anything goes” philosophy. Jesus
did not say “anything you want to do is okay.” Yes, Jesus showed love to
people who had all kinds of lifestyles. But Jesus did not tell them, “Do
anything you want.” Jesus did not tell them, “Just keep doing what you’re
doing.” Jesus would not have needed to come to earth, Jesus would not
have had to die to save us from the consequences of our sins, if anything and
everything we wanted to do was okay. That was not Jesus’ message.
Jesus’ message was, “Go and sin no more.” Jesus said he had come to call
sinners to repentance. Jesus’ message was for us to repent of our sins,
and follow Him.
We do not do anyone a favor by telling them it’s right to
do things that are against God’s teachings. Yes, we get forgiveness of
our sins from faith in Jesus, but Jesus himself said he did not come to abolish
God’s laws. Instead, he said he came to fulfill them. In fact,
Jesus said that not one letter, not the slightest stroke of a pen, would
disappear from the law until all the things written in that law came to pass.
But, in thinking about that, there’s another of Jesus’
teachings we need to remember. Jesus told us that, before we start
telling someone else about the speck in their eye, we need to take the log out
of our own eye. In other words, before we start telling someone else
about their sins, we’d better make sure our own life is in order. We’d
better repent of our own sins, and ask God for forgiveness, before we tell
other people they need to do that. We’d better go and sin no more
ourselves, before we start saying that to anyone else.
Now, most of us have heard that teaching before. And
we know the truth of it. But--it’s so much easier to see other people’s
sins that it is to see our own, isn’t it? It’s so easy to see what other
people are doing wrong than it is to see what we do wrong. It’s so easy
to hold others to a strict standard of accountability, while at the same time
making excuses for all the mistakes we make, all the sins we commit, all the
times we fail to do what God wants us to do.
And again, I’m as guilty of this as anyone. I am not
pointing a finger at you. Or, if I am, I have all the other fingers
pointing back at me.
It’s not easy to see ourselves as we truly are. Our
pride, our arrogance, our ego, our self-centeredness, those things all get in
the way. In other words, our own sinful nature gets in the way. Our
sinful nature tries to make us focus our attention on other people’s sins,
while making excuses for us to ignore our own sins.
This is not something we can do by ourselves. Now,
certainly, we need to do our part. But we also have to allow the Lord to
do the Lord’s part. The last line of our reading for today says, “If the
Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.”
The truth sets us free. The Son sets us free.
So the Son--Jesus--is the truth. We know that truth when we follow Jesus,
when we do the things Jesus said to do.
So, I invite each of us--most definitely including me--to
look at our lives and how we live them. Are we truly following
Jesus? Are we loving our neighbors as ourselves? Are we loving our
enemies? Are we praying for those who persecute us? Are we
forgiving those who have sinned against us? Are we repenting of our
sins? Are we loving the Lord our God with all of our heart and soul and
mind and strength? Are we putting our trust in God, regardless of the
circumstances? Are we staying faithful to God, not because we want God to
do something for us in return, but because staying faithful to God is the right
thing to do?
We could go on and on with questions like that. And I
don’t mean them to sound accusatory. I am not trying to imply that anyone
here is not doing those things. Each of us needs to answer those
questions for ourselves. I need to answer them for myself.
I encourage you to take some time with those
questions. And I need to take some time with them, too. Let’s think
about them. Let’s pray about them. Because those questions are not
easy. And again, it can be very hard for us to see ourselves as we truly
are. We need the Lord’s help to do that. But asking these questions
will do us no good if we don’t do everything we can to answer them honestly.
And if we answer them honestly, and we’re not satisfied
with our answers, we need to do something about that. It can be easy to
make excuses about that, too. It can be easy to convince ourselves that,
even if we have faults, even if we are sinners, we’re basically doing okay, and
we don’t need to really change anything. I know how easy it is to
convince ourselves of that, because I’ve done it many times. And of
course, if we do convince that we don’t need to change, then we won’t
change. We’ll continue living in our sins.
Jesus wants to set us free from our sins. And He
will, if we follow his teachings. So let’s ask Jesus to help us look at
ourselves in the light of His truth. Let’s ask Jesus help us truly follow
Him, and live lives that show we follow Him.
It’s fine for us to celebrate our freedom as
Americans. But as Christians, it’s even more important that we celebrate
our freedom from sin. Through faith in Jesus, we can celebrate that most
important freedom.
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