John 8:31-36 Pastor Nathan P. Kassulke
Reformation Sunday, November 3, 2019 “Remain in Jesus’ Word”
This past Thursday, I saw a You Tube star. I saw an Olympic gymnast. I saw a superhero, like you might see in comic books. In fact, I saw all sorts of amazing people and animals and fantasy characters as they walked past me, and they stopped, and they said, “Trick or treat.” Maybe you had a similar experience on Halloween. Halloween gives people the opportunity to dress in a different way, to try to look on the outside in a way that is very different from who they really are. Hopefully, this Halloween dressing up is all in fun. It doesn’t need to cause real mischief. It doesn’t need to be scary. It can be just a fun thing to try to look like someone you admire or enjoy or have some connection to. But as fun as this costumed, make-believe activity may be, it reminds me of something not so fun. Sometimes the rest of our lives are more like Halloween than we would like to admit. What I mean is that there are other times when we try to look on the outside different than what we know to be true on the inside. We try to hide our sins from others, sometimes even from ourselves. We might even struggle to understand exactly what is true. We might feel like things are not the way we want them to be. We might even be confused about what our lives are all about. In our lesson this morning from the eighth chapter of John’s Gospel, Jesus gives us an answer to all of this uncertainty and confusion and misdirection. He tells us that the one place to which we can always turn for the truth is his Word. And he reminds us how important that truth is in our lives. Based on Jesus’ preaching here, today we encourage each other to remain in Jesus’ Word, for the truth that sets us free and for our place in his family. John’s Gospel tells us how Jesus had been preaching to and teaching some large crowds. Many of the people who heard him believed the things he was teaching. And it was to those individuals specifically Jesus spoke these words from our text, “If you remain in my word, you are really my disciples. You will also know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” That was confusing to the people. They had never been slaves. They were part of God’s chosen people, the Israelites. They were descendants of Abraham himself. Of course they were not slaves. Why would they need to be set free? But Jesus explained that their insistence about this was a costume. It was a mask that they were trying to wear. It was misguided. They had misunderstood his point. His point was that they had been slaves to sin. They had been born in sin, and their lives were full of it, no matter how hard they tried to hide that fact from others. Their lives gave evidence of this slavery as people continued in sins. That’s what Jesus came to free people from. He came to take away sin. He came to forgive it. He came to die for the sins that people had committed and to give them his perfect life instead. He came to make them truly free. He has done the same thing for you and for me. We were born as slaves to sin. Since our ancient ancestors Adam and Eve fell into sin, all people have been born sinful. And you can still feel the effects of your sinful nature in your life. Are there times you know what the right thing to do is, but you don’t want to do it? Something else is easier or more fun. Are there sins that you just keep coming back to? Maybe you even feel sorry about it when it happens, but the next day or two days later, you find yourself doing the same thing. We can still feel the pull of sin that once held us in slavery. We can try to hide it. We can try to deny it, but we know it is there. So what is our answer? Jesus says that our answer is the truth that sets us free. He says that we find that answer in his Word. That Word tells us that we are indeed sinners. In the Bible we learn that we have not lived up to God’s expectations. We could not keep from sinning. We act in sinful ways. We speak in sinful ways. We think in sinful ways. We know that we deserve punishment. But we have been set free. There was one exception to the descendants of Adam and Eve being born in slavery to sin. One special child was born with God as his Father to a virgin human mother. Only he, Jesus Christ, lived a life that never once felt the pull of sin’s slavery over him. Only he, Jesus Christ,