1 Corinthians 3:11 “For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.”

Nothing is more important than the foundation in a building project. You see commercials for foundation repair. Sometimes the damage is so severe, there is no saving the building. Structure and foundation must all be removed and replaced. You’re familiar with the leaning tower of Pisa in Italy? Big foundation problems.

So Paul warns us not to build on false foundations. Some Christians try to build on fervent, passionate feelings towards Jesus. Everything is based how humans respond. Now don’t get me wrong. I hope that Jesus inspires powerful emotions in you. I hope that your heart is broken by the things that break God’s heart. I want you to know joy in God’s grace to you. But can you build the faith of people or a church on something so uncertain and shifting as emotions? Isn’t that going to turn out like a bad marriage in which two people were married because of their infatuation, without ever really getting to know each other?

Others try to build on moral lives. They fill their preaching and teaching, their reading and learning, with practical instruction. The applications extend to the finest points of Christian living. Again, don’t misunderstand me. I want you to practice good morals. As a pastor I may even get on someone’s case if they don’t! But without a healthy dose of Jesus’ love, all this morality teaching will eventually lead away from God to self-righteousness or despair.

Some churches try to build on such a spectacular presentation of music and pictures, lights and drama, that they could rival or even surpass the best theaters. One that I know even advertises itself as the “fun church.” I am not suggesting that there is any virtue in making church boring. But entertainment alone cannot feed the soul. It only distracts the mind and dulls the soul.

If we build with God, there is only one foundation on which we can build, and that is Jesus himself. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He is not going to shift on us. He will not change his mind about his love for us. I know that he loves me and forgives me whether I feel it or not.

And he does not base my relationship with him on my performance. He bases it upon his performance in his perfect life of love and his innocent death for our sins on the cross. He established that relationship by calling me to faith at my baptism. He maintains that relationship by sending me love letter after love letter in his word, and by inviting me to sit down with him and share an intimate meal of forgiveness with him in his Supper. That not only supports my faith. It supports a life that loves to serve him, that wants to serve him, in all I do.

Is it hard to find Jesus’ life of love and sacrifice for us interesting, compelling, captivating? Tell me the story again and again! Here is where I want to build my faith and life. Here is the place that I can confidently set the faith and future of my friends and neighbors. When we build with God, Jesus himself is the only foundation on which we build.

John 8:34-36 “Jesus replied, ‘I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.”

There are few things worse than living in a state of denial. Not only do you have the harm and damage caused by some problem in your life. You have the additional obstacle of not being able to see it. You can’t start to fix it until you recognize it.

For example, the “bump” you feel keeps getting bigger and more painful. Maybe there’s even more than one now. But cancer isn’t an option, and you won’t see the doctor.

You insist that you only drink to relax a little. It’s not really that much, and you can stop any time you like. But you can’t imagine a day, much less a life, without it, and the empty bottles are overflowing your dumpster on trash pick-up day.

Do you sin? Every hand has to go up. If we think we are free, then why don’t we just stop? Sometimes people may muster all their strength and courage and manage to put a stop to one sin in their life. They will get past their addictions, clean up their language, stop sleeping around, or put a stop to some other vice. Then pride grows in place of their vice–I mean the ugly arrogance that is full of oneself. Love may still be lacking by and large. Sin runs deeper than the bad behaviors we see on the surface.

Some people will even redefine sin in order to avoid Jesus’ diagnosis. A visitor to a Bible insisted that she had stopped sinning years ago. A little exploration of the subject made clear that she was not willing to consider any bad thoughts or attitudes as sins. Anything we might classify sexual sin was “just some people’s interpretation.” It’s hard to lose the game when you get to change the rules as you go along.

If we are honest, we can’t duck Jesus’ diagnosis: we are slaves to sin by nature. Don’t we find ourselves in the same struggle as the Apostle Paul, “The good that I want to do, I don’t do. The evil that I don’t want to do, that is what I keep on doing.” People speak of “free will,” but it would be better to say we are “self-willed.” Our “self” has been twisted and bent by sin. We are all inclined in a certain direction. That’s not real freedom anymore.

Here’s the problem with our slavery: “Now a slave has no permanent place in the family.” What is Jesus’ saying? What does it mean to lose your place in the family of God? It’s the same as losing your place in heaven. It’s Jesus’ gentle way of saying, “Your sin has earned you a place in hell.”

Thankfully, there is more to the story. Jesus promises: “So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” Earlier, Jesus promised this freedom through the truth he teaches. Sometimes people say “The truth will set you free” as an encouragement not to lie. Everyone knows how one lie has to be covered by another. Soon you can’t remember exactly how your own story goes. Each new lie adds a bar to the cage you have built around yourself. But the truth, however painful, will set you free. This observation may be true, but that’s not what Jesus is means in this case.

The truth Jesus has in mind teaches about where we stand with God. It starts with the truth that we sin, and we are slaves to sin. But it is so much more than that.

Jesus teaches us the truth about God’s grace. Even more, “…if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” Jesus makes grace possible. He made our freedom happen. Mere months after he spoke these words, he was going to return to Jerusalem. The city would welcome as a King, but in less than a week they condemned him as a criminal. They crucified an innocent man whose only crime was that he loved them enough to tell them the truth.

On the cross, he loved us still more. He carried our crimes with him and the sins and crimes of the whole world. He let his heavenly Father forsake him, as though he was the one who needed to be banished from the family for his sin. He let death take him there as though he was the world’s one and only sinner. By his suffering and death, he satisfied all the debt we owed because of our sin.

That means we are no longer spiritual prisoners sitting on the devil’s death row. We are restored sons in God’s everlasting family. Here is Jesus’ truth: the Son has set us free.

Luke 6:22-23 “Blessed are you when men hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For that is how their fathers treated the prophets.”

If you had lived in Jesus’ day, would you have sided with the conservatives or the liberals?

On the conservative side were the Pharisees. They were the ones concerned about upholding the whole Bible. They were concerned about promoting good morals. They worked hard at teaching people how to live a godly lifestyle.

On the liberal side were the Sadducees. They were the ones who were progressive in their thinking. They were in tune with the culture. They had a vision for a better society through creative thinking and an acceptance of people and ideas from other cultures.

Does it surprise us that Jesus didn’t become cozy with either one? To be sure, Jesus once said of the Pharisees, “The teachers of the Law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. So you must obey them and do everything tell you.” But in the next breath he continues, “But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach. They tie up heavy loads and put them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them” (Matthew 23:2-4). The Pharisees may have gotten the moral issues right much of the time, but theirs was a burdensome and graceless religion. It lacked the power to help people do the right thing. It was devoid of love—either God’s love for us, or true love for one another.

Jesus insisted on sticking with the truth, even if that meant that he was taking a very lonely position. It made him unpopular with the major movements of his day. Eventually, it led to his crucifixion.

Those who follow Jesus still find that sticking to the truth can put one in a very lonely position. More and more, confessing what the Bible has to say brings the disapproval of those around us.

When Bonnie Witherall was murdered in Lebanon for her missionary work fifteen years ago, even fellow Christians criticized her for evangelizing. One Christian leader compared her to a terrorist, complaining, “She was in the habit of gathering the Muslim children of the quarter and preaching Christianity to them while dispensing food and toys and social assistance” (Christianity Today, Feb. 2003).

Is telling people that Jesus is the Way to heaven a form of terrorism? The churchman quoted wasn’t alone in his evaluation. Similarly, the book titled When Religion Becomes Evil lists five signs that religion has become corrupt. Among the five signs: “absolute truth claims.” Apparently the one who said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life,” and “If you hold to my teaching you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth…” was starting a corrupt religion.

We should not be surprised if faithfulness to our Savior’s words meets with the same kind of disapproval. Jesus warned that those who disturb the peace by defending the truth of the gospel would be unpopular. But then, he promises that those who do so enjoy some fine company. “That is how their fathers treated the prophets.” That’s how they treated Jesus, too.