Welcome Home: You're free to be yourself

John 8:31-38

31 To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. 32 Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

33 They answered him, “We are Abraham’s descendants and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?”

34 Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. 35 Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. 36 So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. 37 I know that you are Abraham’s descendants. Yet you are looking for a way to kill me, because you have no room for my word. 38 I am telling you what I have seen in the Father’s presence, and you are doing what you have heard from your father.[a]”

Listening guide

“be you”  

“Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (Jn 8:32) 

Edna Foa – immersive exposure therapy  

1st idea: Only the ____________ can set you _________________. 

“Everyone who sins is a slave to sin ... and if the Son sets you free you will be free indeed.” (Jn 8:34-35) 

2nd idea: The more our truth is __________ and his ___________ over sin, death, and the devil, the more we will know his ________________. 

“a son belongs to it forever” (verse 35)  

Bible = An aerial view of your life  

“Our pleasure and our duty, though opposite before,  

Since we have seen His beauty, are joined apart no more. 

To see the Law by Christ fulfilled, to hear His pardoning voice, 

Transforms a Slave into a Child, and Duty into Choice.”  (John Newton)

Discussion questions

None

Text

Not long after I came to Otsego, I had the chance to meet with the mayor. She gave me this advice about working and leading in this town. “be you”. “Don’t need to be trendy”, just “be you”.  

When were you last told “be yourself”? If you can, tell the person next to you. (Pause for 30 seconds)  

“be yourself” is probably the most common advice we give to students in high school and college. It means so much more to us than, “(My advice to you is to)  be true to yourself and everything will be fine.” (Ellen Degeneres, 2009)  One journalist urged her audience to “honor your character, your intellect, your inclinations, and, yes, your soul by listening to its clean clear voice instead of following muddied messages of a timid world.” (Anna Quindlen) That’s what “be yourself” means to many of us. 

And the Bible actually says some of the same. It’s just deeper, more nuanced. It’s richer. St Paul told the people in Colosse, “He is the one we proclaim … so that we may present everyone fully mature in Christ.” (Col. 1:29) You know what that means, don’t you? It means God wants you to grow up fully. He wants you to become who you are supposed to be. Another example is Philippians 3. Paul says, “I want to attain the resurrection of the dead.” Again that means, he wants to be the post-resurrection person he is supposed to be. God intends to make you into that person.  

God actually wants you to be yourself. What he wants is richer, more nuanced than what you and I actually mean. So he says today, hey, let me show you that you are free to be yourself. You’re free to be yourself. And he is going to tell us three things: what makes us free, getting free to be me, and staying free and becoming me 

What makes us free 

The main verse today is really popular, really well known. Jesus says, “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (Jn 8:32) Even if you aren’t a church going person, I bet you know this statement. “The truth will set you free”.  

This statement is widely accepted. Both religious and nonreligious people accept it, even though it challenges us. It means that we have to face some kind of deep, dark scary monster to be free. Let me give us just one example of it.  

There is a doctor out east named Edna Foa. A few years ago she was one of Time Magazines Top 100 people. She is a pretty well known person. And that is because she specializes in one kind of therapy. She calls it “immersive exposure therapy”. She works with women who have post traumatic stress disorder. What she does is actually pretty traumatic. She makes them live that traumatic experience again and again and again. She sits them down on her couch and makes them describe the experience in excruciating detail. The sights and the sounds and the smells. Over and over and over. She says that what happens, the process destimulates those events.  It is rough. But it’s undeniably clinically beneficial. She would say two things happen: 1. the women get a chance to confess it. They got to confess what they went through. Number 2. The path from sickness to wellness, that is from A to B inevitably involves obstacles. Most people want to avoid the obstacles. You have to confront those obstacles head on. You have to run through them. Only the truth can set you free.  

That's just one example. I would think to convince you, we’d probably need to do another 5. The basic point is just this. If you want to be free to be yourself, you have to have the truth. You can’t live in lies and falsehoods and be free. You have to face your monsters to be free. Only the truth can set you free.  

Getting free to be me 

That’s what makes us free. The truth. I would guess though that every one disagrees with me right now. Even if you’re saying, yes, that’s right, pastor, the truth sets you free. I still bet that if push came to shove every one of you would say, no pastor, the truth actually constrains me. I understand if you’re saying, how can the truth set me free? In my experience the truth constrains me. It controls me.  

From my perspective, the truth forces me to do things that I don’t want to do. It forces me to feel things I don’t want to feel. It doesn’t seem to set me free. 

I bet this example sounds familiar. I open my budgeting software. I see that my credit card payment went through. Does that make me feel free? (wait for an answer) Almost every morning I walk downstairs and an hour or two later 2 little kids walk downstairs (the other 2 are still sleeping). The first thing they say is, “Good morning. What’s for breakfast?” Does that make me feel free? Here is one more example.  

I’ve been playing piano since I was a child. I think I started taking lessons around 10 years old. I played for a few years because my mom really wanted to and it was okay. But its not cool for a teenage boy to take piano. So when I was 12 or 13 I started to resist playing lessons. I definitely felt conflicted about it. On the one hand, I wanted to play music. I wanted to excel at it. I wanted to make beautiful music that people would love and enjoy. And the truth or the reality was, I wasn’t amazing, but I was on the way. It was slowly happening. On the other hand, I wanted my peers to accept me. I wanted them to approve of me. The truth or reality was I had a deep need for my classmates to like and they would only like me if I was good at cool things, like basketball and baseball. And so I wanted to quit.  

You can sense how much conflict I was in. It was terrible. Awful. I remember when I was 14, I went to a few piano lessons at the beginning of the year. That was the deal. I told my mom I had decided to quit. She must have talked to dad and a few days later came back and said, Nathaniel, I’ll pay you if you take lessons for the year. I’ll pay for the lessons and pay you to take them. And if you next year you still want to quit, you can. 

I remember driving up to the piano teacher’s house that next lesson. I hadn’t fully made up my mind. I bet I could still find that house. I decided, ok, I’m going to take the lessons. I didn’t instantly feel free. I didn’t walk out of there lighter than air. But slowly, surely, I began to see value of piano. I got to play in high school. I started to play for churches. I learned to sing well because I could easily read music. And now, I fill in gaps at Peace when it works.  

I didn’t realize it then, but my mom did an incredible thing. 

Did you hear what she said? She was telling me, I see you are in captivity. I see that your desires create conflict in you. On top of that, the truth that you need a place to belong and you need people to accept and love you trap you. They enslave you. She also said, I will buy you free from your captivity. I will pay the price so you don't have to be trapped between your desires and your classmates.  

Jesus himself says, “Everyone who sins is a slave to sin ... and if the Son sets you free you will be free indeed.” (Jn 8:34-35)  

What he means is, I see that you are in captivity. I see that your desires create conflict in you. I see that you simultaneously desperately want to love people and want them to love you. I will buy you free from your captivity. I will enslave myself to human beings and your desires. I will let you rule over me. I’ll do that so when sin, death, and the devil nail me to the cross, they’ll lose all power over you. Those desires won’t be your truth. Instead I will become your truth. I will be your truth. And you will be set free.  

You and I will always have conflicting desires in us. But what is going to set us free is when there is someone outside of us, more beautiful, more wonderful, more excellent. When he is our truth instead of sin an death and the devil, then you and I are free. The more our truth is Jesus and his victory over sin, death, and the devil, the more we will know his freedom.  

Staying free and becoming me 

That’s not only how we get free. That’s how we stay free.  

What the gospel is, is this: Jesus is the only legitimate child of God. He is the only real child of God. But because of his great love for us, he came and gave his life so that you and I, who are illegitimate children of God, can become legitimate children of God. (“a son belongs to it forever” (verse 35) 

If you want to become you, you’ve got to constantly say, I don’t deserve to have God as a Father. I don’t deserve a thing. But because of Jesus Christ, I get to call God my Father and I get to live life in his house.  

That is going to be hard, incredibly hard for each one of us because it means we are going to have to confront the deep, dark monsters of our lives that keep us from actually calling God our Father. We’ve got to stop trying to go around all that hard stuff and we’ve got to go through it. As Jesus says in the beginning today, we’ve got to hold to the teaching.  

As an example, let’s imagine you are a person that just doesn’t happen to have a lot of hope in life. You don’t hope that God is watching over you, working for your good and taking care of you.  

So now imagine you’re going through life and it’s kind of like being on M89 and then m40 all the way from here to Holland. You inevitably get stuck behind a truck going ten miles under the speed limit and you have to stop at all the lights in Allegan. As the miles creep by, you start to lose hope that you are going to get there on time, that you are going to finish your errands, and that in general your day is going to go well.  

All you have is a linear view of the road. You can just see the truck and around the truck as you go around the curves. And as you sit there creeping along, you think I wish I had an aerial view of the road. I wish I had a helicopter up there that would show me what’s done the road. Because then I could see that there are no cars for miles and its totally safe to pass this truck even though I don’t have any idea what is coming next.  

You know what the Bible is? It is God with an aerial view of your life.  

The Bible is God saying to you, I know you don’t have much hope for your relationship with your coworker. But I want you to know that Jesus is on the other side of every conflict.  

The Bible is God saying to you, I know that you don’t have much hope about this direction of this world and life in general. But I want you to know that heaven and earth will pass away but my words will never pass way.  

The Bible is God saying to you, I know you don’t think you will ever succeed in life. But I want you to know that my ways are so much higher than your ways. And if I could take an insignificant Jewish man from an insignificant Jewish town who lived a mostly insignificant life and change the world, what can’t I do for you?  

It’s God saying, do this, don't do this. Here is how to treat people. Here is how to manage your money.  

It’s the aerial view of your life.  

If you can submit to that, just imagine how much freedom you and I would have to finally become ourselves. We would finally be free to be the right versions of ourselves. The people that God created us to be, Jesus redeemed us to be, and the Holy Spirit is changing you to be.  

I don’t think I can say it any better than John Newton, the writer of Amazing Grace.  

“Our pleasure and our duty, though opposite before,  

Since we have seen His beauty, are joined apart no more. 

To see the Law by Christ fulfilled, to hear His pardoning voice, 

Transforms a Slave into a Child, and Duty into Choice.” 

Welcome Home: Ask for help with your heart.

Hebrews 2:9-18

9 But we do see Jesus, who was made lower than the angels for a little while, now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone. 

10 In bringing many sons and daughters to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through what he suffered. 11 Both the one who makes people holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters.[g] 12 He says, 

“I will declare your name to my brothers and sisters; 
    in the assembly I will sing your praises.”[h] 

13 And again, 

“I will put my trust in him.”[i] 

And again he says, 

“Here am I, and the children God has given me.”[j] 

14 Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— 15 and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. 16 For surely it is not angels he helps, but Abraham’s descendants. 17 For this reason he had to be made like them,[k] fully human in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. 18 Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted. 

Listening guide

If every family is not really or actually a family, then not every group of believers is really a ___________ _____ _______________. 

Become a real family of believers.  

• How Jesus feels about us 

• How we feel toward each other 

• What we can say to make it happen  

Verse 11 “Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters.” 

Jesus wants to _____________ with you.  

Verse 14 “he shared in their humanity … to break the power of death … and free those … held in the fear of death.” 

We _____________ people into the group. 

Verse 18 “he[Jesus] is able to help those being tempted.” 

• You got to say here is what is going on in my life. What is God trying to tell me.  

• You gotta say, here is what I read in the word. What is God trying to say to me? 

Ask someone for help with your ________. That’s how you become more of a family. 

Sermon

 Some creatures can reproduce asexually – worms and such. Every human being has to be part of a family. Humans bare minimum have a mother and father. There is at least a family by blood.  

Similarly, Christians don’t reproduce all by themselves. Everyone has a spiritual father or mother or siblings. There is a spiritual family. That comes from a real physical connection. That comes from Word and Sacrament.  That’s just a fact.  

Some of you have lived in families that aren’t really families. Even though you are related by blood, the families have been broken. Abuse is probably the worst. Neglect. Absenteeism. If you describe your family life, you would say, we’re not really a family. I fully recognize that not every family actually is a family.  

Here is the push today.  

The same is true of a group of believers. Not every group of believers is genuine group of believers, a spiritual family.  

There can be spiritual abuse. Neglect. Absenteeism. We’re not really a family.  

You can’t expect family dynamics in a congregation. People will frequently say, “we’re a family of believers”. That’s true. What they mean is, we share a physical connection by baptism and the Word of God. We also share a nonphysical bond. Large group dynamics will never be the same as family dynamics. You can’t expect the same intimacy. You can’t expect the same transparency. If you do, you’re setting us all up for disappointment.  

Let's push on that. Not every group of believers is really a family. Immorality can hurt a group of people. Take the biblical example of Jacob who married both Leah and Rachel. 2 wives and 2 concubines made for a tough life. After Leah had her first kid she said, “Surely my husband will love me now.” Wow, that is a lot of pain. The poor woman. About money there is the reminder that the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. These things easily hurt or damage the physical connection a group of believers has. Baptism and the Word start to mean different things when immorality and greed are commonplace in a group of people.  

Most of us, we can’t do a whole lot about the physical things that challenge a group of believers. You can’t do much about someone else’s moral choices. You can’t do much about someone’s financial choices. You can make a huge difference to a group of believers when you focus on the nonphysical connection.  

The writer to the Hebrews here today, he challenges us and he says, if you’re good at dealing with immorality or greed in a group of believers, what you’re really saying is all we have to do is protect the physical connection and we’ll be just fine. We’ll really be a family of believers. What he says is, you need to be good at dealing with the deeper, spiritual connection. That’s the way to be a real family of believers. That’s his invitation 

Let’s become more of a real family of believers. Let’s deal with this deeper spiritual connection and become more of a family. And he has this great progression for us that helps us become more of a family. First, how Jesus feels about us, then how we can feel toward one another, and lastly, what we can say both to him and each other. Those three things, how Jesus feels about, how we can feel toward each other and lastly, what we can say to make this happen.  

First, how Jesus feels about us. He says it pretty plainly. “Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters.” (Verse 11) Wow. Incredible, isn’t it? Jesus isn’t ashamed to call us brothers and sisters. 

One part of the Bible that everyone skips over quickly is the genealogies. Literally. I actually tell people when they start reading the Bible to skip the book of Numbers except for the first 10 chapters or so. It will kill your happiness. I’m sorry. Save that until you’ve read the Bible 5 times or so. Same with huge chunks of 1 Chronicles.  

But there is one genealogy you need to know something of. Here is the genealogy of Jesus.  

• Rahab  

• Solomon 

• Ruth  

• Tamar  

• David 

Do you know any of these names? Do you know these people?  

• Rahab – prostitute from Jericho 

• Solomon - polygamist son of David  

• Ruth – widow foreigner, eager to remarry 

• Tamar - incest 

• David – murder, adulterer 

These are the people Jesus is not ashamed of. These and many more. I know there are many times where I have either jokingly or seriously said, “Them? I don’t know them.” Jesus says, “they’re my brothers and sisters.”  

What’s he doing? He is identifying with us. If someone loses a key for the church, we might make them feel badly. Maybe badly enough that they don’t want to be around anymore. Jesus says, I gave up my key to heaven for you. Threw it down into hell. We might say something that makes someone feel badly about how they clean, so badly they don’t want to clean again. Jesus says, I came into the mess of life. I am okay with rolling around the muck of life with you.  

And by doing this, what he has done. He has shifted our attention from all the stuff we thought was hurting our physical connection. What hurts he says is shame. What helps you, he says, is me identifying with you.  

We think immorality, greed hurt our physical connections. They do. They cause problems without a doubt. We hurt our spiritual bond just as much when we’re ashamed of someone who cleaned the church.  

What he feels about us, what he feels about you, can totally change how you feel about yourself. It doesn’t matter how bad you think you are. Jesus wants to be with you. He wants to connect with you. He wants to identify with you. He feels so strongly for you. That’s how he feels for you.  

How should we feel for each other.  

In verse 14, the writer says, “he shared in their humanity … to break the power of death … and free those … held in the fear of death.”  

What he is saying, he is saying that people live in fear of death. You and I, we live in the fear of death.  

I think most of us would say, no I don’t. It’s been a while since I’ve thought of death and been afraid for myself. I do a lot of funerals. I often think of death. I realize my life is short. I’m afraid of the insignificance of my own life. But I’m not usually afraid of death.  

If I had to admit, I would say that I am afraid of the death of other people. I think about the loss of my parents and what it would be like without them. My family. Some of my friends.  

So you know what does dominate my thinking? The fear of the loss of connection. That’s shame. Shame is the fear of the loss of connection. This is incredibly corrosive to our lives.  

The German psychologist Sigmund Freud actually has a comment here that helps us. He points out that the fear of death dominates our consciousness. On the one hand, he said, we have a death wish – feelings of guilt, shame, not living up to what we ought to; on the other hand there is an enormous fear of death, it seems like the end of everything; the unknown. Our response is to repress the whole conflict. We hate to think about it.  

If you come home at the end of the day and someone says, And so instead of incorporating people into our lives by telling them what is going on, we leave people out. We experience guilt, shame, and judgment and fear death. We hate it all. We repress it. We push it down. We step by step separate ourselves from other people instead of letting them in.  

What Jesus does then is incorporation. I’m going to take away the fear of death and death itself and bring you in.  

Jesus defeats death. He puts death to death. And not only that he raises life to life.  

What he is giving you is a family where there is no shame and guilt. You’re forgiven really and truly, so there is no death wish. Plus there is no death itself. Life lives. So there is no fear of the loss of connection.  

Believers in Jesus will live forever. You can stop repressing and hiding all the stuff you’re thinking about. This is a good place to talk about it. There is no shame. Come be part of this family.  

His resurrection naturally brings people. It says all that fear that drives doesn’t need to anymore.  

We got to see a pretty unique example of all this in the last few weeks, but it took three people to pull it off which shows us just how special what Jesus does actually is. 

As a country we have experienced the trial of Amber Guyger who shot Botham Jean. That was pretty awful.  

What Amber is experiencing now is shame. She was afraid that she would lose her position as a police officer, as a family member, and as a part of society,  

Everyone noticed when Brandt Jean forgave Amber. He was giving his testimony. He said this. He said, “I forgive you, and I know if you go to God and ask him, he will forgive you.” It was an incredibly powerful moment. Great compassion. People have praised him to no end for what he said.  

A few people noticed what his mom said. Allison Jean who lost her son, watched Brandt forgive Amber. She hugged her. She also said, “Forgiveness for us as Christians is a healing for us, but as my husband said, there are consequences. It does not mean that everything else we have suffered has to go unnoticed,”https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2019/october-web-only/botham-jean-forgiveness-amber-guyger.html  

She is right. The sorrow, the guilt it’s incredible.  

Who is paying those consequences? She is. Allison is. Amber is. Brandt is. And the country is. We’re all slowly taking away Amber’s shame. Brandt got to hug her. We take away the shame. 

What Jesus does, he is all three roles. Jesus is all the Jeans. Jesus has done what it took Brandt and Allison and Botham to do. Jesus made himself the sacrifice. He gets to incorporate you into a family where there is no fear of death because he died himself.  

The way we should feel about others is no shame. Incorporate them. Bring them in.  

We incorporate people into the group.  

What we can say 

So what do we say to make this all a reality.  

The last verse of our lesson says, “he[Jesus] is able to help those being tempted.” Verse 18 

Sometimes you get help you don’t want. It’s called unwelcome or unsolicited advice. How many of you are good at taking help that you didn’t ask for? (Show of hands)  

Most of the time help goes better if you as for it. It just does. 

If you want to be a family, a real family, you got to ask for help.  

You got to say here is what is going on in my life. What is God trying to tell me. You gotta say, here is what I read in the word. What is God trying to say to me?  

Here is what I want you to do this week along with all the other homework I give ya.  

Take one of those two questions and ask someone else.  

Ask someone for help with your heart. That’s how you become more of a family. You ask someone for help with your heart.