TRANSCRIPT


You Are Truly My Disciples If You Remain Faithful To My Teachings ( John 8:31-32)
A Sermon By Elise Beatrice - 30 June 2025

Please let everything be according to Your will. Let everything be according to the Lord Jesus’ will, which is Your will, Father. And let everything be according to what You want; that everything goes according to Your purpose, Holy Father, God Almighty. Thank You for helping me and guiding me with Your truth. Guide us all and help us, Lord, all of us. In the name of Your Son, Jesus, I pray. Amen. 

In the Lord, we are bound to go through sufferings, and we should always rely on the Lord as our Comfort. So, the Lord Jesus is bringing our attention to Matthew 5:10, which reads, 
“God blesses those who are persecuted for doing right, for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs.”

There is not a single truly devoted servant of the Lord Jesus among us who is not persecuted for doing right. The persecution can vary from verbal to physical to spiritual. Spiritual persecution is when demons themselves are at work, attacking and oppressing us in their many evil ways for being devoted to the Lord. However, verbal and physical persecution are when the same evil spirits and their master, satan, use humans to persecute others. But the Lord comforts us. Yes, whenever we’re going through that, we should consider ourselves blessed.
‘Blessed are those who are persecuted for doing right, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.’ 
The Lord also said in John 8:31-32,
Jesus said to the people who believed in Him, “You are truly My disciples if you remain faithful to My teachings. And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
So, those who remain in the Lord and do what is right do so because they know the truth. Because of that truth, they’re free, despite being persecuted, falsely accused, and subjected to any form of persecution.

Yes. Whether it is today or in the generations to come, if you are a true disciple of the Lord Jesus, you remain truthful to His teachings. Surely by remaining truthful to His teachings, since He is the God of love, righteousness, justice, goodness, morality and all good things and ways, you are doing what is right. And by doing what is right, those who hate what is right will persecute you. Those who live by lying will hate you. Those who love injustice will hate you. Those who hate righteousness will hate you. But if that happens, we should know that we are blessed and the Kingdom of Heaven is ours. 

The Lord is teaching us here that His disciples, when He was on earth, were not the only disciples He will ever have, as in every generation, there are new disciples of the Lord. As long as we live, as long as the faith continues, as long as the Lord lives, and we live in Him, and are waiting for Him to come again, there will always be disciples of Christ, and those are those who remain truthful to His teachings. However, we must discern. We should not call ourselves disciples of Christ because it sounds good. And we should not accept those who are calling themselves disciples of Christ, because by doing so, while teaching wrong and disobeying the Lord, they have gained popularity while deceiving many. 
Testing the spirits, we use the words of God in this context. And it is easy to look around, to look among the teachers out there and see who is remaining truthful to the teachings of Christ, by the Scriptures. 
If you know the words of God, you can just tell who is faithful and remains truthful to the teachings of God. 
There are thousands of disciples nowadays in churches. They call themselves disciples of Christ. But the Lord said, ‘You will recognise them by their fruits, you will recognise false prophets by their fruits.’ 
Many give themselves big titles because they sound good. But are you living up to that name which you gave yourself? I am a disciple of Christ. I did not call myself that; the Lord Himself said I am. And without Him I can do nothing; I cannot say a word, I can’t even dare to touch His Book to say that I’m going to preach the Gospel without Him. So, we should all judge by the fruit that we produce. 
The Lord is there to guide us, and we can use His words as our mirror and listen to His Holy Spirit, given that it is indeed His Holy Spirit dwelling within us, not evil spirits counterfeiting the Lord Jesus’ Holy Spirit. So, many call themselves disciples of Christ, yet they are still teaching wrong, they’re still living in sin, they’re still leading the Lord’s flock astray; they’re just using them for their own gain. And that is not what the Lord Jesus teaches.  

‘You are truly My disciples if you remain faithful to My teachings. And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’

We cannot be the Lord’s disciples unless we know what He teaches. We must listen to Him and let Him teach us. Because, though His words are written in the Holy Bible, if we don’t let the Lord Himself teach us, if we don’t let  His Holy Spirit of Truth remind us of that truth, it is very possible to know the whole Scriptures and not understand them. For the devil puts a veil over people’s eyes, preventing them from seeing, and the wax in their ears, preventing them from hearing, and a huge stone in their hearts, preventing them from feeling. And only the Lord and His Holy Spirit bring that truth to us. So, let’s not call ourselves disciples of Christ because it sounds good. Let’s live up to that title by listening to the Lord Jesus and His words; by living for Him.

Yes, it is better to have no title at all. It is better to call ourselves no name at all, as long as we are faithful to the words of Christ, as long as we are faithful to Him. It is deadly if we give ourselves a name but do not live up to it. Some people call themselves ‘Doers of the words of God,’ yet they do their own words, they do their own thing, they worship and follow themselves, follow their opinions. But this is the truth here. We are not here to oppose the Lord; we are here to agree with Him. We are here to listen to Him, and we are here as His servants to welcome Him and let Him teach us His words and help us to understand His words and use us to preach His words, to save lives, to save souls, and to tend His flock.     
So, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, the fear of the Lord is hatred for evil, and those who certainly are giving themselves big titles, but do not live up to that, and do not even listen to the Lord Jesus, surely, they have no fear of the Lord. So God’s Will be done.  

If the Scriptures were just for people of the past, that means now that they all died physically, the Scriptures have no more use. But as we stand here in this generation, this Book is my only Book, it is my sacred Book; the only Book I read every day. It is my treasure, the words of God in here. And that shows us that this Book will be. This is the map; this is what guides us to Christ, and it will be until Christ comes again. When we see Him, we will not need the Bible; we will finally have the Word right before our eyes. Yes. Now we have His words in His Book, the Holy Bible.
The Bible will never be destroyed; it will still be kept and preserved in Heaven. We will have the Lord Himself, who is the Word, with us. So, it is very important that we listen to the Lord Jesus and His words while we’re still in the body. His true disciples were not just in the past when the Lord was on the earth and even after He ascended into Heaven, but there are true disciples of the Lord even today. 
In John 17, He is praying even for His disciples of today. The Lord continuously blesses those who are ready to serve Him and brings them to be His disciples. But we must remain truthful to His teachings; we cannot teach our own. We cannot teach man-made ideas. We cannot worship our Lord with our lips, but our hearts are far from Him. We must remain truthful to His teachings. We must let Him continue to teach us well, as He has always been doing. For it is Him indeed who knows the truth, who is the Truth, and when we are listening to Him, He surely helps us know that truth; His Holy Spirit of Truth remains in us and reminds us daily of the truth, according to Christ. 

I pray that this helps you. Jesus is Lord. And He is our King, the King of kings. He’s our Master and our Teacher. May His peace be with you. May this truth bless you. And if you have been teaching wrong, and if you have been calling yourself a disciple, by name, but you have not really been listening to Christ, it is time you begin, for if you do not begin to really live for Christ and by His words, and to remain faithful to His teachings, then you are in the darkness, going to hell. But the Lord is warning you here. Yes, you may have taught wrong, but He could always use you to undo some of the damages you made in the past by not listening to Him if you turn from your ways now and begin to live for Him and do His Father’s will alone.  
The Lord Himself has said, “The wicked behaviour of a wicked person will not condemn them if they turn now and repent.”
So, I care about you, and I care about all those out there. Many truly just go out there and do it with no bad intentions. Yet they are teaching wrong, and even if they have good intentions, they are still deceiving many; they are still leading many to hell. So, let’s just listen to Christ and examine ourselves according to His words.
“You are truly My disciples if you remain faithful to My teachings. And you will know the Truth and the Truth will set you free.”
Let me put it in this way, 

Remain faithful to the Lord Jesus’ teachings, and you will know the Lord genuinely, who is the Truth, and the Lord, who is the Truth, will set you free from all lies, darkness and hell.’
Let’s examine ourselves with the Lord Jesus alone as the Truth that sets us free.

Yes, that truth will set us free, according to Matthew 5:10, 
“Blessed are those who are persecuted for doing right, for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs.” 

So yes, when the Truth sets us free, it sets us free from all false accusations, from all lies. For it is because we have embraced that Truth that we are free. And because we are free from sin, from the darkness, that is why the darkness targets us and persecutes us. But we must be happy because that persecution of any kind: verbal, spiritual or physical, is coming as a sign to say, ‘Yes, now you are now free from sin, you are now free from the darkness, and even if you are oppressed and persecuted, the Kingdom of Heaven is yours.’ That is good. So, we are blessed, for the Lord is with us, His Father is with us, His Holy Spirit is with us. That’s when we have been set free indeed from sin. 
The truth can only set us free if we remain truthful to that Truth; the Lord Jesus and His words. Those who are not truthful to the teachings of Christ don’t know the truth, and that Truth has not set them free, so they are still slaves. They are still slaves to sin, slaves to lies, slaves to satan, slaves to sinful nature. For the Truth that sets them free, they have not welcomed it, they have not listened to Him: God, the Lord Jesus, who teaches us the Truth.
I pray this helps you. 

Lord Jesus, thank You so much for Your Truth. You are the Way, The Truth and the Life. Thank You for Your ways, for Your Joy and peace. Thank You for Your goodness and Your Righteousness. Thank You for Your Holiness. Thank You for the Scriptures. Thank You for every Word in this Book, Lord, that came from Your mouth, the mouth of Your Father, and from Your Holy Spirit through Your prophets and even Your truth from Your Holy Spirit in Your devoted servants of today. Lord, we love You, and we bless You, and we thank You for the great things that You do. We Love You, God. Please deliver us from evil and help us, please, to always remain truthful to You. 
Thank You for helping those who truly want to be helped, those who truly want the truth. When people want evil, they receive evil from Your enemy. When they want Good, You bring those good things to them. 
You are God who is good forever, and we depend on You forever, Lord Jesus. Thank You for Your great work in us all who listen to You. 
In Your Holy Name, Lord Jesus, I pray. Amen.