Jesus said to the Jews that the truth shall set them free. They didn’t understand, they said that they are Abraham’s descendants and had never been held in bondage to anyone. Jesus said that whoever commits sin is a slave to sin, a slave doesn’t abide in the house forever but a son abides forever. There is that personal relationship with a son, where as a slave is just business.  God wants intimacy with us, through Jesus we can have intimacy with the Father.

            Jesus then gets pretty blunt with them, He tells them that He speaks what He has seen with the Father yet they seek to kill Him; they do what they have seen their father do. They then reply and say that Abraham is their father. Jesus then said that if they were truly Abrahams children they would do the works of Abraham, instead they seek to kill Him the one sent by God and Abraham didn’t do this. He then says that their deeds are the works of their father, the devil. Jesus didn’t sugar coat anything, He didn’t hold back incase of offense He said the full truth and that’s what we need to do.

            I’m going to share this story I heard that was shared by a pastor that describes the importance of sharing the FULL gospel without watering it down. There were workers on a construction site and the supervisor showed up, he wanted to help do manual labor for once so he asked for a job. They gave him the easiest job so he wouldn’t make any mistakes and set them back on their schedule. They gave him 100 2x4’s and said cut each of these to exactly 8 feet in length. He took the first board, measured it out and cut it eight feet and thought there had to be a faster way to do this. So instead of measuring the next board he just layed it under the one he had just cut and cut it to the same length. The problem with this is that because of the width of the saw and the guard and the wood in the way, the next board wasn’t exactly 8 feet, it was 8 feet and a centimeter. He then took that board and got a new one and continued the process all the way to the 100th board and that’s when he realized each board was a different length, none of the boards were 8 feet except for the very first board that was done correctly by using the tape measure. The word of God is like this today in the sense that we have a perfect 8 foot cut that is the gospel, but some twist it or water it down and that creates a board that is 8 foot and some inches. Some highly water it down which makes a 9 foot board. We were given the 8 foot and we need to share and imitate the 8 foot, nothing else. Too many have feared offending people so they share the 9 foot watered down gospel because its more comfortable. But this isn’t what Jesus did, Jesus didn’t water it down and He is the model we are to follow which means we don’t wanter it down either. For years all I ever heard was a watered down gospel, because it was so watered down I never gave my life to Jesus and surrender because according to the watered down gospel I heard, I didn’t need to. The day someone spoke the truth, it offended the flesh but was music to the soul; I immediately gave my life to Jesus and got born again. We cause more harm than good when we water things down. We are to deliver the 8 foot cut, not 8 and some inches.

            Notice as the chapter goes on, they question how He could even know of Abraham when He wasn’t even 50 years old to which Jesus replied that before Abraham was, I AM. To this they took huge offense and took up stones to through at Him, but Jesus hid Himself and went out of the temple and through the midst of them passed by. He was protected as He walked through the midst of them to leave. He wasn’t afraid to offend them even though it lead to them wanting to stone Him. Today, (in America) all that happens when someone offends someone else is it leads to gossip then normally goes away. Being stoned is obviously much worse than gossip yet we act as if we too will be stoned if we offend anyone with the truth. We shouldn’t aim to seek to offend, but we should aim to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. We need to get rid of fear of man so that we can affectively share his whole truth in its perfect form. I encourage you to pray over this with God; if you feel like you are lacking the boldness and confidence to share the word with others without watering it down then cast out the fear of man and ask God to give you the confidence and boldness needed to share His word to others.