How The Truth Can Set You Free, Part 1

Welcome to this weekend's In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley. As a believer in Jesus, you can embrace and rest in the spiritual liberty that God gives you. Here's part one of How the Truth Can Set You Free. Well, I'm excited about what I want to share with you today because I believe if you will listen very carefully and apply what you hear, that many of you who have been saved a long time but have never really even begun to reach anywhere close to joy in your Christian life, I believe in this passage of Scripture is the solution and the answer to beginning to enjoy the Christian life.

And I want to encourage you parents to listen very, very carefully for yourselves but also for your children because the title of this is How the Truth Can Set You Free. So let's begin reading in John chapter 8 and let's begin with verse 28. Jesus had forgiven the woman, taken adultery, and then he and the Pharisees got into a conversation and so this is part of it. He says in verse 28 of John 8, Jesus therefore said, When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He and I do nothing on my own initiative. But I speak these things as the Father taught me.

Now watch this next verse. And He who sent me is with me. He has not left me alone for, don't you wish you could always say this? I always do the things that are pleasing to Him. Don't you wish you could tell folks that about you in relationship to God?

I always do the things that are pleasing to Him. As He spoke these things, many came to believe in Him. Jesus therefore was saying to those Jews who had believed Him, If you abide in my word, then you are truly disciples of mine. And you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.

They answered Him, We are Abraham's offspring. We've never yet been enslaved to anyone. How is it that You say, You shall become free? Jesus answered them, Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin. And the slave does not remain in the house forever.

The Son does remain forever. If therefore the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed. You and I are living in a rebellious age, an age in our society when everybody wants to be free. We want not only no limitations and no restrictions, we want no accountability.

And we want no consequences. But friend, life's not that way. Because God says we are accountable to Him and we are accountable to each other in certain areas. And so there's no such thing as a life of total complete freedom.

Because we are all either the slaves to our old flesh, which gets us in trouble or we are subservient to and slaves to the Lord God. Would you open your heart to ask God, Lord, if I am in some form of bondage and do not know it, would you please show me that, that I may indeed be free? We live in bondage. And the bondage has been programmed.

And in order to be released from that, there are certain things that must take place. And I want to say to you parents with all of my heart, listen to me. Be careful what you say to your children. Be careful how you say it. Be careful what you fail to say.

And be careful the expression on your face, whatever it might be. Because friend, you are programming success or failure into the grid system of your children every day. The thing that's wrong with this crazy, mixed up, hurting, desperate devilish world is this. We don't take time to recognize what we are doing to one another. And so we have whole groups of people who grow up feeling rejected. And then we wonder why they become angry and violent. Because they're hurting on the inside, they want acceptance.

All of us need acceptance, a sense of belonging, a sense of being worthy, and a sense of being competent and thought to be that. I want to plead with you parents. Get on your face before God and ask him to show you please for your children's sake and your own sake.

Show you what you're really doing to your children. Now, the results of that is it paralyzes. It paralyzes, it gives a sense of inhibition.

And you know what it does? It puts a level on what you and I are capable of doing and becoming and achieving all of our life. When we've had that kind of stuff programmed into our thinking all of our life, we have to live with that. And if we don't learn how to overcome that, every time we want to rise, the pressure's there. And if we're not careful, the pressure gets heavier and heavier and heavier until finally anything, I'm not worth anything.

And you know what happens? So we give up to a settle for lifestyle over here that will never reach the capacity for which we have been divinely ordained to reach and equipped by Almighty God to reach it. You say, well, I can identify that because I do feel inferior to some people. I do feel insecure at times.

I do feel so absolutely inadequate oftentimes. Well, let's see what the Lord Jesus said about all that because Jesus Christ and He alone is the liberator. Listen, if therefore the Son, the Son of God Christ, shall make you free, you shall be free indeed. All right, then go back up to, if you will, verse 31. Jesus therefore was saying to those who believe in Him, now watch this carefully.

If you abide or continue in my word condition now, then you are truly my disciples and, and you shall know the truth. And what shall set you free? The truth shall set you free in order to be free from whatever I have been programmed with in the past or whatever I may have done or whatever habits may be there in the past. May not be something that somebody else programmed.

It may be sin in the past or some sinful habit or whatever it might be. There are three things I want you to notice here. The truth that sets men, women, and young people free is the truth that comes in the following manner. First of all, the truth of, first of all, my position in Christ.

Now stay with me. The truth of my position in Christ, that I'm in Him and He's in me. Second, my person, that is who I am in Christ Jesus. Who am I in Him? And thirdly, my possessions in Christ. What do I have in Him?

When I understand my position in Him, when I understand my person, my personage in Him, and when I understand my possessions, what I have in Him, when I understand that and make application of those three primary truths in my life, I'm on my way to being free. Now I want you to watch something. Let's move from there for just a moment.

Now stay with me. There are three attitudes that every single one of us need. We need the sense of feeling that we belong, whether it's to the family or a group. The sense of belonging. Secondly, the sense of worthiness. And thirdly, the sense of competence. All of us need that. But there's another set of threes.

All right, watch this. My position in Christ gives me my sense of belonging. Therefore, what does that do?

That eliminates one of those three things I was talking about. Insecurity, inferiority, inadequacy. Listen, my position in Christ assures me of my belonging. And when I know to whom I belong, then I don't feel insecure. Listen, God is my security. And the truth is, my friend, He's the only security any of you have. Everything else you have is passing.

Whether it is your reputation, your finances, your position, whatever it is, it's all passing. The only security you have that is the only thing that is immovable, unchanging, unalterable and eternal that you have is Jesus Christ living within your heart. Your position is that you're in Him. Therefore, you have a sense of belonging.

If you have a sense of belonging, then you are secure and insecurity is canceled out. Secondly, what about my person? My person says that I am worth so much that God the Father sent His only begotten Son into this world, and He would have died for me had I been the only sinner down here. That says something about your worth. He came to give His life a ransom for many, and that means you, that God loved you enough to give His only begotten Son just for you. Friend, that makes you worthy in the eyes of God.

You don't have that. God made you just the way you are. And if you allow Him, He'll make you the way He is.

So inferior to what? If I know who I am and my worthiness in Him, that cancels out my attitude of inferiority. The third one then is my possession. That is, what do I possess in Him? You read the promises of God's Word and there they are. My possessions eliminate the problem of what? Of inadequacy because when you have Jesus Christ He says in Colossians, you have what?

You have everything. So you see, when we begin to understand the truth, the truth frees us from what? A feeling insecure, inadequate, inferior, and you begin to understand who you are and what you have and where you're headed and what this wonderful God of ours is trying to do in your life. He wants us to know the truth. He says the truth will set you free. He didn't say your feelings would set you free. He says the truth will set you free.

That is, you and I have a choice. I can either live by the facts of what I know or the feelings that change. Now the fact is, listen, the facts are that I am in Christ and Christ is in me. The facts are I know who I am in Him, a saint, a servant, the son of a king. And I know what I'm incapable of doing that is in Christ Jesus there is nothing I do not possess. There is nothing I cannot do in Him.

They're the facts. You can do anything God wants you to do. You are worthy of something God died for you. You are somebody you belong to God and you belong to His kingdom. You belong to the body of Christ.

You are somebody special in His house. That's the facts. Now your feelings, Kate, won't happen to me. I don't deserve it.

All of that is slush, satanic slush that He feeds your mind because you see, if the grid system has been programmed that way, it's very easy for you to believe that. So I'm going to warn you right now before this series is over. Some of you are going to feel very, very out of touch with reality when you begin to stand up and say, Hallelujah, I am adequate before God because He said so. I don't feel it, but I know I am. You're going to think, well, isn't that foolish? I sound like an idiot.

You may sound like it, but you just told the truth. And I'm saying to you, my friend, I'm telling you the gospel truth before God and God wants you to know the truth in order to become everything God has equipped you to become. He says the truth shall set you free. Now watch this verse. Back to verse 31. He says, now, if you abide in my word, that is, where is this truth coming from? If you abide in my word, conditioned upon your abiding. And the word abide here means, listen, the Greek word is meno, which means continue in. That is rest in it, tarry in it. That is just hanging there with it.

Just stay with it. If you abide in my word, then you're truly disciples of mine. The Greek word mathetes, listen, disciple means a learner.

It comes from the root word manvano, which means to focus one's attention, to intensify one's attention. That is to seek after a disciple is one who is seeking after the truth of his master. Listen, and the word carries with it the meaning to pursue in order to experience.

Did you get that? To pursue in order to experience. That is, he says, if you want to know the truth, you get the truth by living in, abiding in, continuing in the word of God. Not just reading it, oh, five minutes before I go to bed, let me read two or three verses. That's not continuing in the word.

Listen, and watch this. It is abiding, living, absorbing the word of God in order to experience the truth of what he says. Not just my little daily Bible reading of chapter six in verse four through nine. I'm talking about getting in the word and asking God to absorb it into your mind.

You know what's happening when that happens? The truth of who he is and who you are in him and who you are and your possessions in Christ, that will free you if you can take the word of God and absorb it into your mind and heart and begin to pursue it and experience the truth of it. I don't care what kind of past you've had.

It makes no difference what it's been. You're asking God to forgive you for the past, to reprogram your thought pattern so that you can begin to think. Listen, think facts, not what? Feeling. Stop thinking, feeling, think facts. The facts are you are adequate. You are secure and you are somebody in God's eyes. And friend, when you begin to know the truth, he says the truth will liberate you from what? The shackles of inferiority, inadequacy, a sense of worthlessness.

Can't do it. And you know what will happen? You'll give up some of these very comfortable feelings of being rejected.

Did you know that a person who has that problem in their grid system, you know what they'll do? If you stick around them long enough, they'll do something to prompt you to get you to reject them because they are comfortable being rejected. As much as they hate rejection, they're more comfortable being rejected than they are being accepted because you see, that's where they've lived all these years. Somebody devastated their mind.

And I'm saying to you, my friend, God wants to free us. This is why some men fail in business. You know why? And I've seen this happen. They get right up to where it's going to happen.

They don't feel worthy. Because I want to tell you again, that old grid system that's been programmed, brother, it's as real as your flesh and blood and far more powerful. It dominates and dictates unless it is reprogrammed by what Paul said in Romans chapter 12 in two verses that all of us know by heart. And he used the phrase, be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the what? The renewing of your grid system.

That's what he said. Those two words not in the Greek, so that's why he said mine. By the renewing and how do you renew it? He says by continuing in the word and the word sets me free. That is when I am able to see myself and my life from God's viewpoint, then I get liberated.

And he says it is yours and mine for the asking. The first step to freedom is stop reading the Bible the way you've been reading it. I want to challenge you to meditate on the eighth chapter of John for one solid week.

Now you can do that. Get your little notepad and the pencil and just start reading John chapter eight. And don't read it five minutes before bedtime.

Read it because you remember what he said? The truth will set you free, but it's the truth that comes from abiding in, continuing in, focusing in, concentrating, hanging in there, seeking to experience the facts of God's word. And he says whatever's in your life that ought not to be there, he will set you free. Father, we thank you and praise you that all truth begins with knowing that Jesus Christ and he alone is adequate to forgive us of our sins, that his atoning death on the cross satisfied your requirement of my penalty, and therefore that we can be free from the penalty of our sin and liberated to become the sons of God by receiving Jesus Christ as our personal savior.

And then you will teach us how to live that life of freedom. And so I want to ask for somebody who's listening, somebody father who's so identified with what we've said today, they're so hung up, so bound by so many things, attitudes, resentment and bitterness and all the rest, things that have happened in their past, would you show them today? The wisest thing they could do right now when I finish praying is to get on their knees, confess their sins, whatever they may be, and tell you by faith that they're receiving you as they're saving their Lord and they want to begin to know the truth and to begin to experience the freedom and to begin to know the liberty that is theirs in Christ Jesus. So Lord, would you show them how important that is and let that decision be a step forward in their obedience to you. We'll thank you and praise you in Jesus' name.

Amen. Thank you for listening to How the Truth Can Set You Free. If you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or In Touch Ministries, stop by intouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.