I’m gonna invite you to John 8 this morning, John 8 is where we’re going to be together. And we’re continuing in John 8 in a section of scripture that we have really been following along in the life of Jesus for a number of weeks because Jesus is at a place where he’s celebrating a festival known as the Feast of Booths. And at the Feast of Booths, there’s a particular reason the Feast of Booths exists and Jesus and knowing the purpose of existence He focuses on one idea related to the Feast of Booths to drive this point, home to the people of Israel.
And the reason I think Jesus does this is because Jesus wants us to understand in the Old Testament especially every system of worship that was established for the Jewish people was intended to be a foreshadowing of what Jesus would ultimately accomplish for us. Meaning when you read about the temple or you read about the idea of Sabbath or law or priests, or even these holidays they’re not to be in and of themselves but they’re a picture of something greater. And Jesus wants us to understand that today, as we look at the Feast of Booths, as he highlights one word and what Jesus wants us to think about this morning is this idea of freedom or living free.
Jesus wants you to live free and you see that in John 8:31. Look at this verse with me for just a moment. It says, “So Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed in Him ‘If you continue in My word, then you are truly my disciples and you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.'” What Jesus is very clearly saying in this moment is God wants you to live free. Jesus wants you to live free. This is kind of like His William Wallace, brave heart moment, right? Freedom .
That’s what Jesus is saying in this passage of scripture. And when we recognize what Jesus is saying here for some of us, maybe even for all of us there should be a part of us that just wants to cling to the statement and ask the question, how do we live free? Because when you think about walking in this world many of us, if not all of us are weighed down by something, right?
We walk with guilt, we walk with resentment, we walk with shame. We walk with anger, we walk with a lack of forgiving towards others and we might need forgiveness ourselves. And so we look at a phrase like that and we think about living free. How does someone even begin to live free? And what does Jesus mean in this passage of scripture when He calls us to this freedom? And I’m glad you asked, right?
When you look at this section of scripture Jesus, in these moments after He gives this statement the Pharisees and the religious leaders they do what great religious and leaders and Pharisees do they complicate things. We tend to do that as people too.
I like it when Jesus speaks Jesus says some of the most profound things in the gospels, very concise, very short, but then when you look at Jesus, what’s proceed or Jesus statements statements we tend to complicate it as people and Jesus gives this wonderful statement these two verses verse 31, verse 32 and then the religious leaders open their mouths and they tend to complicate it. And in this section of scriptures, what we find is the obstacles that we, as people find in living free.
And so when you think about what it means to live free, what this passage first identifies for us as for obstacles to living free. And number one, I would say this, it happens in verse 33 but number one is, we can’t live free when we don’t recognize our need to be freed. That’s kind of profound, right? It’s hard to, as a person to know what it means to live free when you don’t even realize that you need free to begin with but that’s where the Pharisees start with this that Jesus comes in this statement and says, “The truth will set you free” and look what they say in verse 33. “Then they answered Him. We are Abraham’s descendants and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say, ‘You will become free?'”
This was one of those, are you kidding me? Kind of moments. I think if Jesus would be here. Jesus would say, “Look, I want you to live for you.” And Jesus is not just pulling this out of the sky. It’s like, you know what I want to talk about today? I woke up and I felt like my theme word for the day is freedom. You know, I just want to talk about freedom. Jesus, doesn’t just pull things out of darkness and just randomly speak about them. Jesus is being very intentional and why He chooses to talk about freedom in this moment. And the reason he’s choosing to talk about freedom in this moment is because the Feast of Booths is intended to highlight freedom. This is like the Fourth of July.
I told you a few weeks ago because of when this holiday happens, the Feast of Booths happens at the end of the year. It’s really like a series of American holidays rolled up into one. It’s kind of like the Fourth of July, Thanksgiving and Christmas altogether, because it’s a religious holiday that the Jews are told to celebrate and Leviticus they’re supposed to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to celebrate this at the temple. So there’s a religious aspect to it. And then on top of that it happens right after the harvest takes place. So everyone’s collected all of their produce from the land.
And so it’s kind of like Thanksgiving, you got all your food and wealth because it’s an agricultural society. And then it’s like the Fourth of July because this holiday is all about freedom. It’s recognized that God comes before His people and He brings them out of slavery in Egypt and He calls them into the Promised Land. The whole point of this holiday is to recognize how Israel went from being slaves to being free. And after Jesus makes this statement, they look back at Jesus and they say to Him, “We’ve never been slave of anything.” And as if Jesus could just look at this moment and think “I’m talking to a room of foolish People. There’s a bunch of…”
I don’t want to say they completely miss what the intentions of this holiday is all about and they have forgotten where God has brought them. And so there’s some irony to this moment, but, you know, guys, when I think about the idea of freedom and what it means to be free. And I think here in America, we call ourselves the land of the free and the home of the brave. Right? But, you know, I think even in our understanding of freedom there’s confusion. When we often talk about freedom I don’t think we really describe the fullness of what freedom is about. I think we’re very good in describing what the beginning of freedom is about, but we don’t understand why we’ve been set free or we might be a free people, we don’t understand how to always live free.
And there’s a difference in between being freed and living free. In fact in The American Heritage Dictionary, I put it up on a slide here just so you can see it. And what I mean The American Heritage Dictionary describes freedom this way, “The condition of not being in prison or captivity” Well, don’t get me wrong. I love not being in prison or captivity. Like, you know, when I think about the process of living free I first need my freedom in order to live free. Right? So not being in prison or in captivity is a great thing, but when you think about what that means for living your life that’s not really still much of a life.
Like it’s good that you’re not there, but what are you? And that’s what it means to understand, to live free. It’s more than just being set apart from something but it’s also about being for something. It’s about asking the question, what from, and what for? Does that make sense? I mean, how many times in life have you seen someone that maybe they’ve been set free from a bad relationship only to find themselves in another bad relationship? Or you’re set free from an addiction only to to find yourselves stuck with another addiction?
Just because you’ve been freed doesn’t mean you’re living free. And so the question then becomes, how do we live free? Like if I gave you this kind of an illustration, if I went to a junkyard and I decided I’m going to buy me a plane , right? And I go to a junkyard and I set a plane free from a Junker, but then I say to you, “And I’m gonna to drive it to work every day”. You would look at that. That would be a little bit ridiculous to see coming down the road. Right. But is that plane really free?
Like if I pull it out of a junkyard, but I just use it to drive down a road, is that plane really free? And we would see that and say, no, that the plane is not free because the plane is not intended to be driven on a road. The plane is free when it’s in the sky or what if I give it a more living organism illustration? What if I said, “Yesterday, I went to Red Lobster” because that’s where the best biscuits on the planet are. “And when I was in Red Lobster my heart was drawn to the little guy in the cage.” You know, the little lobsters they keep in the aquarium, when you walk in. “And I said to myself, you know what I’m gonna buy this lobster.” And I buy that lobster and I set that lobster free. But then I go home with that lobster. And I decided, you know what I’m a little hungry. And that lobster finds itself in a pot on my stove. That lobster was set free But is it freed? No. Why? Because it’s not living its purpose.
Someone might argue, well, it was freed in the sense that it was created for my belly. Right? But that’s not free. When a plane drives on the road, that’s not freedom for a plane. A plane is intended for the sky. That’s not the purpose of the plane. When the plane is fulfilling its purpose then it’s free. When a lobster is fulfilling its purpose that’s when it’s free. And guys, the same is true for you and me. Just because maybe you have been freed or you live in the land of the free doesn’t mean you’re living free and it’s not until you live for your purpose, that you’re truly living free. And all of us were created for a purpose. And that purpose is only found in God.
You were made for Him. And you’re not living free until you walk with Him, but you can’t do that until you recognize your need to be freed by being with Him. And this is where the religious leaders are in this story. When Jesus comes before, really just the Jewish people in general and He says to them, their need to be free. They’re ignorant to the fact that they need freedom, because they don’t recognize that they’re not living for the purpose for which they were created. And so we can’t live free when we don’t recognize our need to be free. True freedom is living God’s intended purpose for your life.
Number two, the obstacle they faced is this. You can’t live free when you seek freedom from the wrong place. Sometimes in life we recognize things aren’t as they should be and we go pursuing things for which we could find our intended purpose or freedom. But when you seek that freedom in the wrong place, you aren’t truly free. Really. You might be blinded further to bodies by not recognizing that you aren’t free, but when you find your freedom in the wrong place, you’re not really free. Look at this in verse 33, this is what they say.
They say to Him, or “They answered Him, ‘We are Abraham’s descendants, and have never been enslaved anyone; how is that You say, “You will become free?'” So what the Jews are saying is, “We’ve got no problems with where we are. Do you not know who we are?” And what they present in order to demonstrate the fact that they’re free is their pedigree and their religion. Like, “Maybe you don’t know who we are. Let me just show you the list of how great we are. We’re God’s chosen people. Do you not know who our dad is? Our dad is Abraham.” Can I just say real quick, God doesn’t care about your pedigree, or maybe I’ll say this way, God doesn’t care who your daddy is. God cares about where you are.
I said just, well, God cares about where your heart is. And this is what the religious leaders are doing here. They’re they’re saying, “Well let me just show you why we don’t need to be free. I want you to just show you how great I am”. And what they do is they provide a list. Religious people are good at providing lists. It’s like asking the question, well, what makes God love you? Or what makes you so great? And religious people instantly wanna just provide the list. “You wanna know how amazing I am. I’m better than that guy.
And here’s why, I was Abraham’s son. We’re God’s chosen people. If anyone got it together, we’ve got it together. We don’t need freedom. Go to those people over there because we’ve got all that we need. Don’t you know who we are?” laundry list. We tend to do the same thing as people. We kind of mask it a little bit different but let me just say it like this. If someone comes to you and says, what makes you a value as a human being? What makes you worth anything? Or sometimes we might ask it like this. So what do you do for a living? What’s your life about?
We tend to want to measure ourselves by our accomplishments don’t we. That’s why we seek power or fame or money or beauty. We think those things make us worth something but what becomes the problem with those things is if you find your value in what you do you’ll always find someone that can do it better. Or maybe one day you won’t be as capable of doing as you thought that you were, or at some point as you had been in life. Power becomes weakness and beauty fades and wealth can vanish and position can diminish. And if you find your identity in those things one day when you don’t have them, or if you lose them what is communicated to you is that you’re worthless.
And can I just tell you, ’cause activity isn’t it intended to determine your identity, your identity it’s intended to determine your activity. Does that make sense? Let me just say it like this. You as a human being your worth, isn’t determined on what you do. Your worth is intrinsically given because of who you are. And this is where the Jewish people are with Jesus in these moments they’re puffing their chest out because of their pedigree, their religion, their laundry list of what they think makes them great, and therefore they see no need for the rescue.
But what Jesus is helping them understand is what makes you great. Isn’t what you do. It’s who you are and who you are. Isn’t given to you by you. It was given to you by God. Your intrinsic worth is your value, and therefore your identity should determine your activity. Belonging to Him, being made in His image should be reflected in your behavior. We’re not here to prove anything to God.
Religion we’ll come to God and give you this laundry list and show you what they do. But people who have been set free, don’t find their freedom based on what they do. They find their freedom based on what has already been done for them in the Lord. And in that identity will then point me to my activity, how I walk in this world. So number two, you can’t live for you when you seek freedom from the wrong place. Number three is this, you can’t live free if sin owns you. Look at this next verse in verse 34 and “Jesus answered them. ‘Truly, truly I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin.'” Now no one likes to be called a sinner. right?
Sorry, if you feel insulted this morning, but the Bible says that we all are. And you might just say, well how do you know I’m a slave to sin? Let me just say, when you leave today, do me a favor prove me wrong and just don’t sin anymore. Right? If you’re not a slave to sin then you should have no problem walking out and never sinning again. Let me just tell you 1 John says this as well. 1 John says, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”
And so what John is saying, anyone who believes that kind of garbage, like they can come out and live perfectly. Just doesn’t have no concept of life or God. There is no truth in them right? Don’t even listen to that person. It’s impossible to not sin because in our nature is a sinful nature. We are all slaves to sin. And what sin does is destroy relationships. You want to know why you have any problem in any relationship in this world. It’s because of sin and sin separates you in relationship and sin causes distance from your relationship. And the same is true with your relationship with God, sin creates distance.
I like to use the illustration like this. I am a father of four boys. I love all of my boys. And sometimes in our relationships things aren’t always perfect. If sin is there, there is distance, right? Doesn’t mean as a father with my children I ever stopped loving them. I always care for them. That will never end in relationship to them. But sin has this tendency of pulling you apart when there is no sin relationship, you are closer together. So the less sin, the more intimacy, and the more sin the less intimacy, right? And the same is true in your relationship with God. But here’s the problem is that unless we’ve been forgiven we have no relationship with God.
That’s why Jesus came. Our sin separates us from God. The Bible says it like this. “The wages of sin is death and death.” And death doesn’t just mean you’re going to go to a grave and be buried one day. Death means separation. Jesus paid for that separation. And so what Jesus is saying here is before God there are two kinds of people. There are sinful people and there are forgiven people. And Jesus wants you to find that forgiveness in Him. Why? So that you can know Him, to live free.
It’s not just what you’re free from, but what you’re free for. And you’re free from something, but you’re free for someone. And when you live with Him, relationship to Him you’re living your purpose and then your purpose you are free. We don’t like to talk about sin. It’s not an uncomfortable topic. Is it?
Like if I said to you today, tell me your sin. What’s what was the last sin that you did? We don’t typically like that sin. We don’t like to be exposed. We like to be a proud people. Sin doesn’t like the lights, sin likes the darkness. We tend to do those things when other people aren’t around and don’t like to talk about those things. Right. But the reality is when you bring it to the light, that’s when you find healing.
And that’s what Jesus teaches us from the beginning of Genesis. When Adam, when he first sinned, could you imagine that like, you’re the one that does the first sin in this world. I mean, I don’t know about you. I try to think about what I would be like in Adam and Eve situation and not fully having a complete understanding of all of that God is and His grace.
I think I would also do the same thing with them. I’m naked and all of a sudden, like I’m naked. So I gotta run and find some fig leaves gotta hide from God. I just screwed this up. He’s going to kill me. Right? But what does God do? He pursues. He calls them out into the light. Adam, where are you? He forgives, God forgives. Part of the reason I think we struggle with the understanding of sin is we confuse sometimes worldly sorrow with godly repentance. It means sometimes when we think about sin what we often repent of, or don’t like about our sin is that we get caught, right? We don’t like the shame of it.
We feel bad when it gets found out but that’s different from godly repentance, worldly sorrow is different from godly repentance. You can feel bad when you get caught. But what God desires for you is not worldly, sorrow bad that you get caught. What he desires has godly repentance meaning you agree with God because you see your sin the same way God sees your sin. And you turn from that and you embrace Him. It’s not about just getting caught. It’s about carrying the heart of God towards the things that we do.
And the other thing is I said the final thing that I think we often struggle with is when we think about sin or one of the reasons we don’t talk about it is our picture of God is skewed. We talk about sin in life. And if you grew up in a religious environment what we think often about God is God has this figure who just sits up in heaven with this long, beautiful white hair in this big beard. And he’s ripped muscles and he’s waits for you to screw up so He can zap you in the rear end with a lightning bolt. And we think all that God wants to do is tell us how bad we are.
And that’s not what this passage says at all. God is not there just to send the lightning bolts to your hind in like, that’s not God’s purposes. What God says in this passage is that He wants you to be free. And what that means is free from your past. Well, what that means is to set every encumbrance in your life that has held you down and realized Jesus wants you renewed in Him to place it at the cross and you can leave it behind a walk, in that goodness and run with Jesus, that’s what God wants you in your life. He doesn’t want you to feel guilty. He wants you free from that guilt. So you can run with Him because you were created for that purpose.
God, isn’t interested in you running around, feeling bad. You don’t do anyone service running around and feeling bad. God’s interest is for you to let that go. So you can live for what He’s called you to. Your from what, but for what, right? You’re from that past of darkness that he could be for the light, for what you called in Christ. And so when you understand that picture of sin it’s not just to come and cast judgment but it’s to recognize in our life what it is I need to rescued from so that I see my need for Jesus, and I run to Him and I run in Him for the rest of my life. Because in Christ there is grace.
Number four, you can’t live free when you reject the only one who can for you. He can’t live for you when you reject the one who came for you, verse 35. “Now the slave does not remain in the house forever. The son does remain forever. So if the son sets you free, you will be free. I know that you are Abraham’s descendants, yet you’re seeking to kill me because my word has no place in you. I speak of the things which I’ve seen with My father, therefore, you also the things which you have heard from your father”.
You can’t find freedom until you trust in the one you’re made free for. Jesus is helping them to recognize that He’s saying, look, you may be in the house. You may be in the house of Abraham but you don’t belong in the house. That’s what he’s saying here. And He’s using this illustration of slave and son. And what he’s saying is look in Jesus’s day when there were slaves slaves could belong in a home but slaves weren’t given the rights of the family. What it means is when the father would die the inheritance would go to the son but the slave would get no inheritance.
And what Jesus is saying is like, you might be in the home but you don’t have the inheritance. I have the inheritance. It belongs to me. And because it belongs to me. If I give it to you, you will be free indeed. If I gave it to us, like this was an illustration just because you own a basketball Jersey doesn’t make you an NBA star, right? Just because you own an instrument, doesn’t make you a rockstar. You might not even know how to play it, right. Just because you have something doesn’t mean that you’re a part of it. Just because you come to a church doesn’t mean you belong to God. Do you have Jesus?
That’s what Jesus is saying, “Rather than embrace me you’re killing me. You don’t understand what I’ve come for.” I Wish I had time to dive into this whole section of scripture ’cause when you read from this, you see things get very tense because after Jesus says this to them, they go after Jesus’s mama, they start talking bad about Jesus’s mom. Then Jesus turns back and says to them, “Don’t talk about my mom. You guys are the devil.” And then they turn back and they’re like, “Oh yeah you’ve got a demon.” It gets pretty intense on this conversation.
But I want you to see this in verse 56. This is a very pinnacle moment in this section of scripture, because this answers the question. How do I really know I can be free of all that Jesus is saying? How do I really know if I put my trust here, it’s going to happen? And I want you to know this it’s possible to be free because of who Jesus is. Look at verse 56, “Your father Abraham was overjoyed that he would see My day and he saw it and rejoiced. So the Jews said to him, ‘You’re not yet 50 years old, and you have seen Abraham?’ And Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly I say to you before Abraham was born, I am’ therefore they picked up stones to throw at Him, but Jesus hid Himself, left the temple grounds.”
So here’s what He’s saying. He talks about knowing Abraham, seeing Abraham they’re blown away by this. Like Abraham, you have to be like I don’t know, a couple of thousand years old as the Abraham. How in the world do you see Abraham? And here’s how Jesus says, “I’ve seen Abraham. I’m God.” He says, “I am, I am a self existed one.” The name of God in the Old Testament, Jesus says that’s me. I know Abraham ’cause I made Abraham. I was there before Abraham existed. And I know Abraham now and the Jews get mad.
And what they want to do is kill Jesus for blasphemy. So they pick up stones to kill Him. Jesus makes His absolute claim here. It’s like this. How do I know the promises of God are true for me? Or how do I know these promises are true for me? I should say. And the answer is because He is God, He’s God. He’s able, all things are held in His hand. So everything He says to you is true. He made you for Him. How do we live free?
Let me just quickly say this for us so that we make sure we have this understanding. How do we live free? Verse 31 gave us the answer right in the very beginning, verse 31, verse 32. How do we live free? I want you to recognize just because you’ve been freed, if you’ve been freed in Jesus doesn’t mean that you’re living free. Okay. And the reason I want us to see this is because Jesus puts this statement with a condition. Look at this verse 31. “So Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed in Him, ‘If'” All right, so it’s, so it’s possible as a Christian, I think to even believe in Jesus, but then turn right back to the things that held you in bondage.
So how do we live free? It’s important to understand that this statement right here, living free has a condition. “If you continue in My word, then you are truly my disciples and you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” So how do we live free? Well, number one, recognize it has a condition but number two, I would say this living free begins with trusting Him. That’s what He says in verse 31, right? Right in the middle.
He says this to those who believed in Him or believed Him. Right? They haven’t believed in Him yet but they’ve believed Him. And what that means is they’re listening to the teachings of Jesus. They really like what Jesus is saying. So just starting to believe what Jesus is saying but they haven’t fully committed to it yet. So what Jesus is helping us understand is look there is this place in your life that you don’t just simply just know who He is, but you’ve decided out of everything in this world that you can put your trust in for your identity, it’s the one who made you, where you are intended to belong. It’s the one who came for you, where you’re intended to belong. It’s the one who gave His life for you.
That’s where you’re intended to belong. It’s not just free from something but you’re free for something. So there’s this trust is this believing in Him living free is trusting in Him. You were made not for something but you were made for someone. As a church we have what we call core values here. And we like to use our core values for the purpose of creating a culture among everybody, right? And the first value we have that precedes all of them, know Him, know Him. If you don’t know Him, you will never live free. He’s the one that made you. That’s the purpose for your life. Know Him? Paul said it like this. I love it in Philippians 3, he describes himself. As he says, “The Hebrew of Hebrews, the Jew of all Jews.” And then he says this, though he lived that kind of life. He says this, “I have forsaken it all for the sake of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord,” verse eight to 10.
That’s how Paul describes his life. It’s and I abandoned all of that. He counts it as dung for the purpose, one purpose to know Christ Jesus, know Him may your soul yearn to know Him. Well, they were not showing up this morning for the purpose of doing things. We’re showing up for the purpose of knowing Him to worship, to connect to our God because our identity will then determine our activity. But it all has to start with knowing, knowing Him. And the next is this, living free is learning from Him. And that’s how he describes it right after believing Him. He says, if you continue in My word, it’s learning from Him.
This idea of connecting to God in His word that He communicates. He continues to speak over my life and in my life to direct me down the path for which I am called in Him because this world will scream at me with all kinds of things. But the path that I am called to follow and the purpose of my freedom is to know Him and delight Him. It’s one thing to be freed, right? To be saved, to be rescued, but it’s another thing to live free. And in theology, we would call this your justification being freed, and then your sanctification, you live free.
And so it’s to make this decision every day that I’m going to follow this path of my freedom. To know this God, and to live it out, to cling to His word and to let His word speak over me. And we say it like this as a church to speak His truth in love, our second, value to speak His truth in love. And there’s things that we highlight as important as a passage in Ephesians to speak His truth and love. But that’s the reason as a church, we primarily teach verse by verse that we value the word of God. Because we want you to look at a passage and see what it says, and we can agree with it together. And if I say something crazy, you can tell me later probably didn’t say that you made that up, man. Right?
Because the Word of God is intended to help us walk that path of freedom. And Jesus, that’s the reason we were created to know Him and to walk that path with Him. It’s like, you’re on a journey and walking that journey along with Jesus determines if you live free, speak the truth in love. We don’t take the truth in order to be people over the head with it, we understand God gave us the truth to serve us, to lift us up in Him, to bless our lives, that this word could free us in knowing our Lord and walk free through it. Last is this, living free is intended for community.
Notice when Jesus is saying this He’s saying this not to a person but to a group, to the Jews. It says in the beginning if you are my disciples that says at the end of verse 31. And He says, “If you continue in My word” the Strong’s Concordance for the King James Version says, that this word you “If you continue in My word” that word you is actually an irregular plural word. And so what it’s saying to us is this, you is more like y’all right?
So this is talking to a community. And so when we think about being free, what Jesus has ultimately desire for us is not just to think about this in an individual form. But this freedom is intended for community that we do this together in order to bless one another. When you think about what it is to live life. Live life by yourself is hard enough, right? Living life isolated, I would say it’s impossible because you’re created for relationship, relationship with God, relationship with others. That’s why Jesus is love God, love others. God creates us for community.
And so this is one of the things that we think is important as a church. It really creates two values for us that we highlight but I just wanna say it as one I’ll tell you the two. If I just categorize it as one I would say it like this, no one goes alone. If I said at ABC, when you come in in the morning what’s important to us is to understand guys we don’t want any one going alone. Which says everyone plays a role then in how we interact as a community, whether someone belongs to our community or not, no one goes at this alone that’s why we say if as a church we have two values that relate to this one.
For those that aren’t yet in our community that may participate in those that belong to our community. We say for everyone that comes through our doors, our job, our goal, because we know Jesus we want to walk with Him. We understand the value of community that He calls every tribe, tongue, language to belong to Him is that we feel the calling to care for every soul. Every soul that comes through our door is important to us because every soul was made in the image of God and every soul needs to know their intrinsic worth.
And every soul needs to know there is a God who is pursuing them to set them free. And that is the purpose for which they were designed. And when they know this, God, then in walking with this God that is the first time in their life they’re truly living what freedom is, because just like a plane driving on the road you are not free until you connect to the one who created you for His purpose. And in Him, you find freedom. Every soul, every soul that comes through our door matters which means every person here every person here preaches a sermon every Sunday.
We communicate the value of a human being the way Jesus sees them, the moment we start to interact with someone, the minute their car arrives in our parking lot, every soul matters. And the second is this, that valuable to us as far as human relationship, we say be devoted to one another devoted to one another. When you read in the book of Act 2 what you see in the early church, it says they were devoted to one another day by day, breaking bread and the Lord was adding to their numbers, those who were being saved.
The beauty of the early church they were devoted to one another. And what I mean is this guys Sunday, isn’t just something that we should do at the end of our week. It should be the highlight to our identity for the beginning of our week. This matters more than anything because this sets the precedent for how we live free, come tomorrow morning. And our devotion to one another to walk that path is so important. It’s so important because it’s so easy by yourself to get lost in the crowd, to lose perspective, to put your eyes on something else and to try to find your value in something that you think might free you but really put you in bondage. Relationships, relationships play an important part of that.
You’re living free when you’re living the purpose you were made, you were made for relationship with God. It’s not just about being freed and the land of the free and the home of the brave, but it’s about living free. Do you know Him? Are you walking that path with Him? Do you seek Him in His word? And are you encouraging your community to do it together.