At the spring sale I sold four store lambs and the clerk paid me for five.
It was a paper error at his end and it was about a hundred and ten dollars, and it happened in a shed with two hundred people in it and a line behind me, and he counted it into my hand and said next.
I put it in my coat. I walked out into the yard. And I want to describe the next forty seconds honestly, because they are the only part of this worth telling.
I was not wrestling. That is the thing. There was no struggle in it at all. I had decided, and the decision took about a second and a half, and the reasoning was complete and it was this: it is their error, it is their system, they will find it or they will not, and I have been coming to that sale for thirty years and have been shorted twice.
Every part of that is true. I had checked it and it held.
I got as far as the truck. Toby was sitting in the truck with the window down because it was warm, and Bucky was in the back of it on a rope taking an interest in the tailgate, and Toby had been in the shed with me, and he said, as I got in, that the man had said five and did I get five.
He was not testing me. He is nine. He had heard a number and he was interested in the number, and if he had said nothing at all I would have driven home.
I said, he did, and it was four, and I am going back in.
And here is what I have not been able to account for since. It was not conscience, because my conscience had already been consulted and had given a clear ruling in the yard. It was the boy saying a number out loud in a warm truck, and something in me that had been quiet for forty seconds stood up and answered before I had authorized it to.
It took eleven minutes at the office. The clerk was mortified. I told him it was nothing and it genuinely was nothing.
The half of the verse that gets left off
This is one of the most quoted sentences in the Bible and it is nearly always quoted starting in the wrong place.
If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. (John 8:31, 32)
The famous part is the second half. The first half is a condition and it is a condition about continuing, which is a word about staying rather than about deciding.
And know there is not the word for having information. It is the word for the kind of knowing that comes from being around something for a long time, which is why the continuing has to come first.
You are made free by a truth you have been staying near rather than one you worked out in a yard. John 8:32 puts continuing ahead of knowing and knowing ahead of freedom, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes that order land in a man who is very good at reasoning.
That is the thing about the forty seconds. My reasoning was excellent. Every step of it was sound and I have not been able to find the flaw in it since, and what overruled it was not a better argument.
You have not been left with only your own reasoning to protect you. The written word says the truth makes free rather than saying good thinking does, and His Spirit is what makes that a relief for anybody who has watched their own logic go somewhere they did not want to end up.
Freedom is the word, and it is chosen carefully
The passage keeps going and the people listening take offense at the word free, which tells you they understood exactly what was being said.
They answered him, We be Abraham's seed, and were never in bondage to any man: how sayest thou, Ye shall be made free? Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin. (John 8:33, 34)
The offense is instructive. Nobody objects to being offered truth. People object to being told they need freeing, because that implies a current condition.
And His answer does not soften it. He says the thing that is doing the holding is the thing itself. A person keeping something is being kept by it, and that is a description rather than an insult.
You are not being accused, and John 8:34 is describing a mechanism rather than passing a verdict. The Spirit of God is what makes a description like that read as diagnosis instead of as condemnation.
And the release named a few verses later is not a technique: If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.
You have been freed by somebody rather than having freed yourself. John 8:36 puts the making free in a person's hands rather than in a decision, and the Holy Spirit is the one who moves that off a page into a yard with a hundred and ten dollars in a coat pocket.
So here is what I cannot account for and am going to say plainly anyway.
You are not held together by the quality of your own reasoning, and John 8:32 says the truth is what makes free. The Holy Spirit is what keeps that from being an abstraction and makes it the thing that stood up in a warm truck before a man authorized it.
My argument was sound. I want to say that once more because I think it matters more than the tidy version. Thirty years, shorted twice, their error, their system. Every clause of it was true and it was not enough, and if the whole thing had rested on my reasoning I would have driven home.
You have somebody who does the freeing rather than a method for freeing yourself. John 8:36 says if the Son makes you free you are free indeed, and His Spirit is what makes that read as being carried rather than as being corrected.
And this is for whoever is doing the reading tonight, who has had a forty second version of their own. You were not the only one in the truck. John 8:31 says continue in my word and puts the staying before the knowing, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes staying near something feel like the safest arrangement available.
Declare this over yourself
Say it out loud. You are in Christ and Christ is in you, so the authority to speak over your own good reasoning is genuinely yours, delegated and never invented. God says the truth makes free rather than saying clear thinking does, so speak to the argument you have built: you have standing to address it because He is the one who named what actually frees. An ambassador carries the King's word and never his own policy, so say what God has said and leave the outcome to Him. Every line below is John 8:32 and John 8:36 handed back in your own voice, and it is His Spirit, not your volume, that makes saying it a receiving.
- Second where I nearly said nothing, you are not the last word on who I am. The Word of God says ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free, and it does not say a sound argument shall.
- Reasoning I built in forty seconds, you are finished in the name of Jesus. I am freed and I am not holding this, because John 8:36 says if the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.
- Father, You have never once left me with only my own logic to protect me. I receive that today, and I thank You that Your word puts continuing before knowing, which means the safety was in staying near You rather than in being right.
John 8:32
This message is free, and always will be. There is nothing to unlock, nothing to subscribe to, and nothing you owe for having received it.