Responding to the Plan of God – Week 2
2020: A Year of Celebration!
Freed to Be Agents of God!
Key Verses: John 8:31-39
We are in the second message of a new seven-sermon series called, “Responding to the PLAN of God!”
When I was growing up there was a 1980 musical comedy that became a classic in our household. It was called “The Blues Brothers” and there is a famous one-liner in that movie, “I’m on a mission from God!” I’m pretty sure that was my first introduction to God’s calling… 40 years later, all kidding aside, I can say, “I’m on a mission from God!” That is no longer a one-liner from an 80s movie, it is the truth of my life, my identity.
I have been freed by Jesus Christ to be an agent of God! That is the title of today’s sermon: “Freed to be Agents of God!” based on John 8:31-39.
I preached the big picture of this series last Sunday, and then we premiered it again on Wednesday night. We walked through both the Old Testament and New Testament to show you the thread through God’s Word that we are made in the image of God for a purpose. Listen to a quote from last week’s teaching,
As disciples of Jesus Christ, through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, you are restored as God’s Image Bearers to join God’s plan to bless the peoples of all nations, to bring them Home to the Father. You have been blessed to be a blessing! Saying that another way: We have been brought back into God’s family to help gather the rest of the family for the biggest family reunion ever! God has made a way for people to come Home because God is a good Father and His love never lets go of His children! It is important for us to know who we are as Jesus’ Church: We are restored to be the Image Bearers of God! We are sons and daughters, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s treasured possession! And to know what it is we are supposed to be all about: Blessing the people of all nations to bring them Home to the Father. To be about our Father’s business! This is our response to the Plan of God: being the Church is all about our life purposes as the representatives of God on earth to all the people. You are a restored image bearer of God! You are an ambassador for Jesus Christ!
In this lesson, I am applying this big picture through Jesus’ teaching in John 8:31-39 Here is today’s big point: I have been freed by Jesus Christ to be an agent of God!
Today’s teaching is essential to our lives during the COVID-19 pandemic. As people created to be Image Bearers, we, by design, reflect the image of the god we serve… God has established it this way, as you will see in today’s teaching. Allow me to give you an image to help you understand what it means to be an Image Bearer. We are like a rounded or angled mirror, one where you can see in both directions. God has put humans into His Creation as an angled mirror so that He can reflect His love and care and stewardship of the world through us humans and get this, so that the rest of the creation can see God’s glory through us humans and praise God. We reflect the God we serve to the world! Our lives point to the God who created us and then rescued us (freed us!) through Jesus Christ!
Listen to John 8:31-39,
So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” They answered him, “We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say, ‘You will become free’?” Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. I know that you are offspring of Abraham; yet you seek to kill me because my word finds no place in you. I speak of what I have seen with my Father, and you do what you have heard from your father.” They answered him, “Abraham is our father.” Jesus said to them, “If you were Abraham’s children, you would be doing the works Abraham did.”
There are three things we must be freed from in order to reflect God as Image Bearers, as agents of God’s Kingdom: 1) Freed from slavery to sin, so that we are free to love God (restored back into relationship); 2) Freed from slavery to the world, so that we are free to love those in the world (healthy relationships); and 3) Freed from slavery to false worship (“idols/idolatry”), so that we are free to reflect God as Image Bearers, to be an agent of God’s Kingdom.
The Apostle John taught in 1 John 3:7-8, “Little children, make sure no one deceives you; the one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous; the one who practices sin is of the devil; for the devil has sinned from the beginning. The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil.”
John teaches us what we rarely discuss when it comes to the work of the Cross—the victory over the devil that is ours in Jesus Christ. Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil. Jesus came to usher in the Kingdom of Heaven—the rule of God over all the nations, all of which had gone astray to false worship to idols/false gods, which the Apostle Paul described as slavery to the “elemental things/principles of this world”, a technical term used by the Apostle Paul in a few specific texts to speak of spiritually-animated forces in the world (the koine Greek word stoicheia is in italics in the next 2 verses).
Paul said in Galatians 4:1-9,
Now I say, as long as the heir is a child, he does not differ at all from a slave although he is owner of everything, but he is under guardians and managers until the date set by the father. So also we, while we were children, were held in bondage under the elemental things of the world [italics added]. But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. Because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” Therefore you are no longer a slave, but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God. However at that time, when you did not know God, you were slaves to those which by nature are no gods. But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how is it that you turn back again to the weak and worthless elemental things [italics added], to which you desire to be enslaved all over again?
The Law was a guardian meant to protect Israel from the corruption of powers and principalities… But now that the Spirit of God has come, we can receive adoption as sons, [we are] no longer slaves to sin, [nor need] to be guarded by the Law, but free to act as agents of God! While the Law was meant to protect us from the corruption of powers and principalities, opening the door to worshiping those powers also opens us up to their corrupting influence.
Paul emphasized this same teaching to the early churches in Colossians 2:8-10,
See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world [italics added], rather than according to Christ. For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form, and in Him you have been made complete, and He is the head over all rule and authority [including that of the elementary principles of the world that seeks to draw humanity away from reflecting God’s love of creation]…
Jesus said to the religious leaders of His day, in verse 38, “I speak of what I have seen with my Father, and you do what you have heard from your father [italics added].” Jesus is saying to those who are not free in Him that their father is the devil, referencing not only the devil, but also the structures and systems of evil that he animates in the world (the “elementary principles”). They were serving the wrong head and their works reflected that to the world! The works of these religious leaders were leading people astray because who you serve determines who you reflect! That is why our works are so important—they reflect (point to) who our true faith is in! We are saved by faith, and the God we put our faith in is put on display by our works! I believe that if you can understand that, then all the controversy around faith and works should fall away…
Jesus further explained His accusation in v. 38 in verses 44-45, “You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I speak the truth, you do not believe Me.”
In order to free people to be on mission from God, His Father, Jesus actively worked (He did many miracles) and taught with great authority against the grip of the devil on people, the one Jesus said animated the work of the Pharisees; not the Law of God itself, but the “works of the Law” which were legalistic/religious “heavy burdens” that were crushing the people and keeping them in a heavy yoke of slavery to false worship.
This spiritual worldview of the Bible is significant and runs throughout the entire story of the Bible. God created humans to be His Image Bearers to that which He created in Genesis 1:1—to reflect His glory to all of Creation through our love, care, and stewardship of it as His children. We have a sacred status as humans.
Critically, it’s not about what we can or cannot do (it’s not about any attribute we have) because it is from the moment of our conception that each of us is an Image Bearer of God! God formed us from the dirt and then He breathed His breath into us and declared us His image. Later God forbade us from making any other image in His image, because He already gave the world His image—in us, humanity! Remember the angled mirror?!?
It’s our being that matters, but our doings are what demonstrate our being! That is why these issues are so deeply intertwined and to unnecessarily separate them is to miss the whole reason why we are saved by faith alone. You are redeemed and restored to be an image bearer and as an image bearer to make HIM known to all who stand in rebellion to His rightful and sovereign rule over every aspect of His created realm!
You are freed to be agents of God!
To submit to any other authority than the authority of the God who made us in His image is to forsake our sacred birthright as Image Bearers. That is why sin is such a big deal because it is rebellion against the rightful authority of God and the bowing down to elementary principles of this world. That is why we cannot cherry pick loyalties with the world. We are the “church” and by that name Jesus gave us (the “ekklesia”), we are those who have been called out of the world and gathered together as a sacred assembly of God’s family to legislate (bind and loosen) on earth as it is in heaven (Matthew 16:17-19). As Jesus says in John 17:13-18,
But now I come to You; and these things I speak in the world so that they may have My joy made full in themselves. I have given them Your word; and the world has hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I do not ask You to take them out of the world, but to keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth. As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world.
Jesus is praying for His followers (disciples) to carry on the mission for which He came to the world in the first place. When God sent His unique and only Son into the world to rescue us, He took on the form of that which He had created in His image—a human. John 1:9-14 explains,
There was the true Light which, coming into the world, enlightens every man. He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.
Philippians 2:6-11 further explains of Jesus Christ’s purpose in taking on the form of His image,
Who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
False worship is the outward expression of an inward reality: slavery to the worship of idols, false gods. This is a major issue because it means we are NOT reflecting God, but lesser things. This is the issue in the big story of the Bible. In Exodus 20:1-6 the first two of the Ten Commandments express the critical importance of this to God,
Then God spoke all these words, saying, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. “You shall have no other gods before Me. “You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth. “You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing lovingkindness to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.
This is critical to the church’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic because the greatest hindrance to our ability to work for God is when we work for a god other than the one true God! When we reflect the wrong image and give ourselves to lesser forces… The world needs God right now, not a lesser force, even if a well-intentioned one that is really trying to help alleviate suffering! The only hope is God’s presence!
John’s ever practical first letter ends with these words in 1 John 5:19-21,
We know that we are of God, and that the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. And we know that the Son of God has come, and has given us understanding so that we may know Him who is true; and we are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life. Little children, guard yourselves from idols.
Chapter after chapter of practical teaching on how to love God and love your neighbor ends with words about the evil one and idols. While John’s final comment (v. 21) seems out of place because it’s the first place where John overtly mentions idolatry in this letter, but actually the whole letter is about being freed from idolatry so that you can be free to love God and love people through freedom in Jesus Christ! The Old Testament makes it so clear that you become like that which you worship. For those who make or worship idols, listen to the prognosis of Psalm 115:8, “Those who make them will become like them, Everyone who trusts in them.”
But God foreknew our arrogance and self-sufficient pride, and sent His Son Jesus Christ to deal with idolatry in a way that would strike fear into the hearts of every power and principality to free humanity from its bondage to false worship! Jesus’ life and teaching should strike godly fear into every red-blooded American. Jesus said in Mark 10:21, “Looking at [the rich young man], Jesus felt a love for him and said to him, ‘One thing you lack: go and sell all you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.’”
Jesus pierced the heart of what kept this man in slavery—He had kept all of the external “works of the Law,” but he lacked this one thing: he was an idol worshipper! He had put His trust in something other than God! He was not free to love God even though He kept all visible practices—He was worshipping the security he thought money gave Him. Jesus saw through to his true heart condition and went after his false worship!
This man was in bondage as surely as he was worshipping an idol made with his own hands. As I have heard said so many times in our culture, “I’m a self-made man.” God sees the true heart condition of America!
You may be asking yourself: “Pastor, why are you teaching me this in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic? This doesn’t seem practical or very helpful to my relevant needs.”
Because God is going after the root issue to free you to reflect His image and His image alone! Because there is no true freedom when your building your life on any other rock than Jesus! And the lie that we Americans have believed, that we are secure in our 1st world health care, our comprehensive insurance policies, money and retirements, and possessions has never been so severely exposed in my lifetime. What a severe mercy of God to expose to us our false worship as a culture, and of the church’s compromises from the mission of God!
I pray that God would bring good out of this horrible situation of the COVID-19 situation; that He would seize this moment to once again call His Church to true freedom through the narrow way of Jesus Christ—who is the Way and the Truth and the Life (John 14:6). It is only through the confession of our sin and repentance from false worship that we are free from all other gods. Then, and only then, are we truly free to love God, free to love our neighbors as ourselves, and free to be agents of God’s Kingdom!
Until you are in the yoke of Jesus Christ, you are still bound up with lesser gods and in their yoke of slavery. I cry out to you today with Paul’s words from Galatians 5:1, “It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery.”
I’m on a mission from God! I guess the question for each of us to answer: Which god are you serving? Because you will reflect the image of the god you serve…