And I'm going to ask you to pray with me before we do that because I feel like of all the texts in the Bible, this is the one that really finds us where we are. It's difficult. It is in some ways it is hurtful in a good way, kind of basically just kind of hits us where we are, but it's extremely gracious. It is extremely gracious text, and so I'm going to pray, and I've got to pray with me that Lord would quiet our spirits and enable us to hear what He is saying to us. Please pray with me. Father, this is just a glorious text where you unveil to us the beauties of Christ and you unveil to us the ugliness of our smugness and pride and sin. I pray, Lord, that you give us quietness in this place, quietness of spirit that we be able to concentrate and hear what you, your Holy Spirit are saying to us. We pray that we would hear what you're saying to us as a church. I pray that we would hear what you're saying to us as individuals. I pray that you would uncover us. I pray that you would let us know that we are uncovered and let us run to you and let us find protection and love and grace. I pray in Jesus name, amen. Hear the word of the Lord from Revelation chapter 3 verses 14 through 22. And to the angel of the church and layout to see a right, the words of the amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of God's creation. I know your works, you're neither cold nor hot. Would that you are either cold or hot? So because you're lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I will spit you out of my mouth. For I say, I am rich, for you say, for you say, I am rich. I have prospered and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, hideable, poor, blind and naked. I counsel you to buy for me gold or find by fire so that you may be rich and white garments so that you may clothe yourself and shame, and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen and starve to anoint your eyes so that you may see those whom I love, I approve and discipline. So be zealous and repent. Behold I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come into him and eat with him and he with me. The one who conquers, I will grant him to sit with me on my throne as I also conquered and sat down with my father on his throne. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. Amen. Let's hear the word of the Lord. When I was a 17 years old, I had a date and yes, I dated as a teenager. That is why I do not let my children date because I did. And I know what it is like and I know this was a big date and the reason why I remember that it was a big date is because this I shaved and though I didn't need to shave and almost certainly I could have just gotten by with you know doing that. I did the full shave and I took this girl out and we went to the nicest restaurant in Union City Tennessee at the time which was McDonald's. And all night long, I had noticed people looking at me, I was turning heads at night and I know a lot of reasons for that. I had on my black rug be sure and I was looking good. I also was with a good looking 16 year old girl and so some people were looking obviously to see her and to see me and to see how good we looked together. And as I was enjoying and kind of relishing in the attention I was getting and how good I was doing on this date and how great I was being as I was clearly sweeping this younger girl off her feet. I went up to get a little dessert from the McDonald's counter and I was going to get us a Sunday and I walked by a mirrored post, these posts that were decorated with mirrors. And I you know I shouldn't have but I couldn't help stealing a glance of myself in the mirror. And when I did I saw a big bloody piece of tissue on my cheek. That's why I was turning heads. I was going, who's that idiot on a date with a bloody tissue on his cheek? And I was just confident that I was doing it right, that I was the man of the hour. And instead I was the buffoon of the restaurant. What if we're like that spiritually? What if we think we are the man? What if we think that we are the ones who get it right? We have the right, the allergy, we have the right understanding of worship. I mean look at us. We're perfectly dressed for worship. Not too formal because we're not into the superficiality of clothes, but not too informal because we are going to an important event. We're doing it right. What if we think we figured things out and we think that we are growing in holiness and we think we've got it all down and in reality we are utter buffoons. What if we're missing it completely? This letter that John writes for Jesus, John is the secretary. This letter is to a church that thought they had it right. It's a church in Laodicecia, they were a wealthy church. And because they were wealthy, they assumed clearly as we all assumed, God has blessed us. We got it. And this is the single worst church of the seven that Jesus addresses. There's not a single thing he says they're doing right. There's not a single person he points out as well, at least they're doing it right. They knew nothing of Christ as a matter of fact they had shut him out of the church completely. And they were so proud. And they were so proud. And my message for us today, and I believe God's message for us today is we must not let our worldly position. We must not let our worldly success blind us to the reality of our spiritual condition. We must not become smug and we must call out to Christ to save us from our smugness. We must call out to Christ to save us from our smugness. In the Word of the letter again, into the angel of the church in Laodicecia, the words of the amen, the faithful and true witness of the beginning of God's creation. Laodicecia was a wealthy town. They were founded right at the crossroads of trade and their time and in their place. They had a thriving wool industry. They had the sheep, so they had shepherds there making money. They had the wool and they would create textiles. So they made money there. They had this pharmaceutical of their day where they would take the dust that was in that area, something, some powder that was found in that area, and would create a bomb that was known throughout the land to heal blindness. So they made tons of money off of that. They were filled with traders. They were a very wealthy town. They were so wealthy that when the earthquake of that century came, the one that leveled the two cities that we've talked to before, the ones that leveled Sardis and Smyrna. Laodicecia was so wealthy, they refused any government help, or here is. They refused any government help. They said we will rebuild ourselves and they did. They were a wealthy, self-sufficient town. The problem with being wealthy and self-sufficient is nobody will tell you the truth. If you're wealthy, nobody's ever going to tell you the truth about you, because people want stuff from you. They want to be your friend. They want to be invited to the next party. They want to be invited to the next vacation. They want to be your friend so that you can make their business deals with them, so that you will help them. And Laodicecia needed more than anything else is what every wealthy person needs, and I include everyone in this room in that category. They needed a faithful and true witness to say, this is what you really look like. Jesus is not going to kiss up to them. He's going to tell them the truth, and he's going to tell them that they must be saved from their smugness. They must be saved. He says to them, and know your works, you were neither cold nor hot, with it you were either cold or hot. So because you are lukewarm and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. Jesus tells them that despite all their pride, despite all their self-sufficiency, despite all their wealth, they are useless. They are useless. Now if you grew up in the church, if you went to church camp, you've heard this text before, right? And we all know what that text means, right? You're lukewarm. I wish you were cold or hot. Jesus wishes you would either hate him or love him, but he doesn't want you sitting on the fence, right? You used to be hot for Jesus, but you're not anymore. And God, and he's going to just throw you up, you spit you out of his mouth if you don't get fired up for Jesus again, right? You've heard that. Come on. I'm not the only one who's heard that, right? You know, you're either, you're own Jesus, you're either set for a high beam, low beam or no beam. And he'd rather you be on no beam or high beam than on low beam. You've heard that. Does that sound like Jesus to you? What, did you, does Jesus sound like in any place else in scripture, do you hear him saying, I would rather you hate me than just like me a little, that's a lot. Let's figure out what the text really means, shall we? He's talking about water, lukewarm hot cold in that context. It was clearly, you know, that's life, right? Water, you have hot water, cold water, lukewarm water, he's going to spit it out of his mouth. It's a water reference. It's a reference that Laodicea got. Laodicea was about 20 miles south of the mountains. There was a town in the mountains called Hieropolis and Hieropolis was famous. It was the hot springs Arkansas of its day. It was a health resort and you would go there for hot water. People would literally travel all over from all over the empire to take baths in the hot water. They were healing. They didn't have hot water heaters back then. It was just an overwhelming sensation stepping into hot water. South east of Laodicea was a city called Colossae. The water from the mountains ran down through Colossae. You know what cold water streams feel like. Every time I go to Colorado, I just love to turn on the water because it tastes so good. It's cold, hot water, healing people, cold water, refreshing people. Restoring their spirits. That's what water does throughout the Bible, right? That's what the church does throughout the Bible. The church is the place of healing for the broken to come and to be made whole. The church is the place of refreshment for the tired and the weary to come and be refreshed and to be restored. But Laodicea was in between these two towns and they established their city on a trade route because of the money that could be made there but it was without a decent resource. There was a river that went to Laodicea but all that powder that they were able to make money off of, it polluted the river and had a white mud going through it. You couldn't drink it. It would make these nauseous. They had to build three miles of aqueducts to get water. They couldn't drink their own and Jesus looks at the church and He says, you make me sick like your water makes you sick because you're not healing anybody and you're not refreshing anybody. You don't have the living water. You don't have me. You're useless and you don't even notice that I'm gone. You haven't even recognized that I've been shut out of the door. Why? Why have you not even noticed it? He says, for you say, I am rich. I have prospered. I need nothing. But realizing you're wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked, they were smug. They assumed that since they had wealth, since they had self-sufficiency, since they had security, obviously God loved them, obviously they were better than the people who didn't have those things. We all make that mistake, don't we? Admit it. When you drive in traffic past a car that is old and worn out and worse than yours, you feel better than them. Clearly God has blessed me. We say it in stupid silly ways, right? You hit a good golf shot, you find a good parking spot, what do you say? I saw that clean living. The Lord's blessing me today. If I've got stuff, if I'm doing well, if I'm healthy, clearly God has blessed me. Clearly I'm doing great. And these letters from the revelation are standing up to us saying, look, the best churches, the churches that God just loved, that Jesus said you're doing everything right, were the poor ones. And the church that he does not have a single compliment for is the wealthy one. But they were smug. They were smug. Look at us. We hear it in ourselves. We hear it. And the things we say, we're coming out of Walmart, you're driving through small towns, it's just hard enough to say snide, critical, cynical things, because we're better than them. And they were smug, and they did not see themselves. And in a day and age when churches everywhere are telling people that Jesus died to make them wealthy, the purpose of the gospel is to make you successful and prosperous. It's my job to stand up here and tell you that the Bible teaches the opposite. Not that worldly riches are evil. I'm not going to tell you that, you wouldn't listen anyway. But that worldly riches pose a great threat to your spiritual life, a great threat to your spiritual soul. Death gives us false security, and it gives us false righteousness. We assume everything's fine, we got nothing we need to pray for because all we have to do if we need an answer to a prayer is rip out a credit card. And we assume we're going to be fine because we've got our savings account and our retirement account funded. And we're wrong. That's a big deal and I want us to spend a little few moments there. When I was a campus minister, I would always get my students together at graduation and I would talk to them about the parable of the soils. There's this parable where Jesus talks about the seed of the word, finding its way into thorny, weedy soil. And in that parable, there's always contrast. There's some people who just never get the gospel and there's some people who get the gospel for a little while and the hard times come and they abandon the gospel. And there's the good soil where the gospel gets its way into the soil and it produces fruit 100 times over. And then there's this weedy soil and the weedy soil, the word finds its roots and it begins to bear fruit. But before it can bear fruit, the thorns chokes it out. And he says those thorns, those weeds are the deceitfulness of wealth and the cares of the world. And I would talk to the students just like I would talk to you and I would say, you're not hard rocky soil, you're here. The hard rocky soil, they don't come to church unless you make them, bomb lunch, get them to come. And most of you are not the shallow soil, you've gone through hard times and you stayed and you found that those hard times have brought you closer to Jesus, not driven you away. But all of us are in danger of being the weedy, thorn infested ground because of the deceitfulness of wealth because it makes you think that you're doing better than you really are. And because of the cares of the world, they're always just pushing in and pushing in and we just don't have time to meditate on Christ and we don't have time to thank him and it's very likely for us that we will become the person who's just never looked in the mirror who's never had the faithful and true witness tell us you are not at all what you think you are. And that's what Jesus says is the faithful, the amen, the faithful and true witness. And I want you to see his patience. What does it mean that he's the faithful and true witness? It means not only that he's the one who's going to tell us the truth. But it means that he is the one who has demonstrated the truth for us. He has demonstrated what worldliness gets, what is worldness, preacher word, throw that word away, independence, self determination, picking it out myself, wanting to define myself what's good for me. What does he do? How does we see sin and we see sin as a bunch of things that God is kind of fenced off and we kind of look at it like an amusement park with a fence around it and God saying, yeah I know that sin is fun but you can't go in there. And Jesus came to be the faithful witness. He came to say, let me show you what it really is. And what he does is throughout his life, he keeps pointing to this day when he's going to die and the disciples don't believe him but he's going to die. And Jesus does two things at that death. First of all, he becomes sin for us and then secondly, he dies the death that sin deserves. And he dreads both of those things. You see, Jesus feared becoming a man like you would fear becoming a pig. Do you want to be a pig? Why do you not want to be a pig? There's two big reasons to not want to be a pig. You gave me the right answer. Why you not want to be a pig? They're disgusting filthy animals. Pig doesn't disregard its own feces. It's foul. If you ever look at a pig, if you've ever been in a real pigstide, not in a modern world with a concrete, but just the foul, dirt, mud pigstide, and you look up at an animal with just filth and foul hanging off its chin, mud on its ears, just looking up at you going, hey, you want to join me? This is good slop in here. They're fine with it. And the smell, I went to a high school to tell you about myself. I went to a high school where we had livestock production as a class. And so there was a pigstide on the campus of the high school. And when the wind was blowing from that direction, we couldn't practice football. It smelled too bad. It's nasty, but the pigs don't mind. And Jesus looked at becoming a sinner. And he looked at how our independence made us brought us away from God. And he became the worst. He saw the murderers and the molesters and the adulterers. And he became the worst of all of it. He saw the truth about us and he became that. And he dreaded it. He was the worst sinner who ever lived when he went on that cross. Because God made him sin for us. And then as it's faithful and true witness, he showed us what sin deserves as he died. As he was beaten and hung up on a cross. And as he screamed out, my God, why have you abandoned me? He showed us the faithful and true witness of what sin deserves. This is what you're smug about. Your smugness is like a pig being proud of his pigstie. You're proud that you have gotten more independence. It's going to lead to your death. We don't want to be the second reason we don't want to be a pig is because a pig ends up as bacon. That's its highest calling in life to be bacon. And while we like bacon or any normal human loves bacon, none of us want to be bacon. We don't want to die the death of a pig. And Jesus died. He died the death of a sinner to show us what sin deserves.
He showed us that whenever we mock a poor person, or we look at a new toy or a gadget inviously thinking if we just had that, then we'd be happy. Or whenever we worship an athlete or whenever we lust after a woman, then we're just bathing in our own filth. And we're feeling good about ourselves, the way a pig is proud of his pigstie. And we're getting closer to destruction. That's what Jesus has done for us. In his suffering and his fear of death and his crying out about the abandonment of God, he revealed to us the true witness, hear his sin and hear his what it deserves. And he calls upon those of us who are wealthy. And he says, if being wealthy has delivered you from everything that's bad about you, why didn't I just come down from heaven and give you a job plan? Why didn't I just come down from heaven to become a professor of economics and to teach you a little something? If being wealthy is such a big deal, then why did I have to die? Why did I have to die? If we're so good, then why did Jesus have to be abandoned by his father? The danger for us is to believe that we don't need Jesus because we have an education, or to believe that we don't need Jesus because we have a few dollars. And he wants us to know that all of that amounts to nothing. It's fine to decorate a pig's die, but it's nothing. And lasting riches, he can only give us. He can only give us. And I want you to see how willing he is to give it to us. Look at how patient he is. He says, those whom I love, I'll approve and discipline. So be zealous and repent before we jump into the how we respond to this. I want us to look at that for a second. You hear that? Let me ask you this. How has that text made you feel so far? How is this idea that you think you're rich and need nothing, but you're actually poor, blind, pitiable, and naked? How does that text feel to you? If it hurts a little bit, that is awesome. It's good. If that text convicts your spirit, that is a glorious, wonderful news. Because it has God reproving somebody that he loves. He loves you, your his. It's his spirit testifying with the word with your spirit that he loves you. I've got dozens of children in my neighborhood and I'm more or less like them all, more or less. I got four kids in my neighborhood that I love. You can identify them by their chins. You can also identify them by the fact that they're the only kids in my neighborhood that I discipline. They're the only ones that I review. They're the only ones that I approve. They're the only ones that I love. If you hear the Holy Spirit saying, that's you, you're the person who thinks you're something when you're nothing, that's God's calling out to you, saying, you're mine. Take heart, you're his child. And notice how loving he is. Look at this, look at this text. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone, here's my voice and opens the door, I will come into him and eat with him and he with me. Do you remember how bad I told you layout to see a wife? Every other letter, you can read the other six, has something good, he says something good about the churches. There's two of them, he says that everything about you is good. There's four of them, he says you got some blind spots here, but you have other good things going on. Layout to see if there's nothing good. And he gives that church his most gracious invitation. I'm at the door, I'm knocking, here I am. I want in, I'm not tired of you. I'm not despised, I don't despise you, I'm not disgusted with you, I want in. Let me in. Isn't that the way you are with your children? If you have four, five, six, 20 children, ever how many you have? You have some, they're healthy and they're great and you get on to them right now and then and you have maybe one who's sickly and he gets your compassion, he gets your sweetness. He gets the most gracious you have to give. Jesus comes to this church, not angry at them so much as sad for them, he pities them. Let me in, I'm right here. Let me in. He looked at the poor and the faithful churches, the churches that he was so proud of and he said, all I want for you is that you hang in there till you die. And it just be faithful, you got just a little bit of persecution, it's just gonna last until you die and then everything will be fine. That's what he has to say to the good churches, what he has to say to the bad churches, just let me in. Just hoping the door and let me in. I don't know what that means but whatever it means, I wanna do it. I go to God pretty regularly and I just say, Lord, I don't know what it means to let you in. But I'm trying, door be opened. Come in and he's gracious, he's not like, you know, I'm sorry you didn't say the magic word. He's gracious, he will come in if you let him and that's all he requires us to do. And he tells us how to be saved from our smugness. He says, I counsel you to buy from me gold or fine by fire so that you may be rich in white garment so that you may clothe yourself in the shame of your nakedness may not be seen and sad for your eyes so that you might see. What does he do? He wants us to be saved from our smugness and saved for our sins and he points, first of all to his grace. He's already told us that you're poor, pitiable, blind and naked, you don't have anything. So how then can we buy grace? How then do we buy gold that's been refined by fire if we have nothing Jesus? That's what I want. Jesus, commerce is in nothing. It's pretty cool. You bring him nothing and you get everything. He says the same thing and Isaiah 55, without money come to me and buy. Come to me with nothing. That's my favorite thing. Jesus's favorite people in the Bible are those who realize they have nothing. People who think they have something, he's got a correct to smack around a little bit in a loving, gracious, general way. But people who realize they have nothing, he's all over that. He says bring me or nothing and I will give you gold. I'll give you treasures. Here I am for you. Will you come to me in empty hands? One of my favorite kind of experiences raising children was their first Easter egg hunts. I remember one in particular on his first Easter egg hunt. Two Easter eggs is it. And there are tons or hundreds of them all over the place. They got one in one hand and got one in the other. And we could not get him to put those eggs in the basket because there were his eggs. And he just couldn't pick up the third and so he just kept trying to pick up the third. And that was it. That's what he did with the whole Easter egg hunt. In Jesus says that about us, if your hands are full, if you're so pleased with your righteousness, if you're so pleased with your wealth, if you're so pleased with your life, if all you're trying to do is make your life better, just get that scholarship, get that grade, if you're obsessed with your life, your hands are too full for me. But if you'll bring me or nothing, I will fill them. One of my favorite Psalm promises open your mouth wide and I will fill it. He comes to us with nothing. One writer says the only thing that Jesus requires is a broken heart. You have it. Do you have it? If you do, then you can take heart, that he receives you and he gives you life. And then just briefly, let's look at what life looks like after we receive life, after we receive that forgiveness. If you don't know that you have that, come and talk to us. I'll say more to you in just a moment. What does life look like? How can we pursue holiness after receiving grace? And the first thing I think this text teaches us is after we receive grace, we have to give. This is great episode in the life of Jesus. Jesus, if you don't have to read the Bible much, if you've not heard it much, he went through for three years teaching and preaching. And from time to time, he would come up to people and he would say, you follow me. You follow me and they would all, without with only one exception, they all left everything and followed him. And one day, a wealthy young man came to him and said, good teacher, what must I do to be saved? And Jesus said, you must keep the law and he said, I have kept the law. And Jesus loved this man. And he said to him in the text, you lack one thing, go sell all that you have and give to the poor. And you will have treasure in heaven. And he said those magical, wonderful words come, follow me. And the one time in the Bible, we hear these words, the man went away sad. He did not follow him. He loved his stuff too much. If you want to love Jesus, you have got to give away your stuff. You have got to give away sacrificially. You've got to give away forcefully. You have got to give away in a disciplined way. You've got to put the knife to your own throat and go, give more. Because I don't want to love this money. I don't want to love this stuff. And if you're a cynic, if you're like me, I want you to know, I am not saying this because our church budget is in trouble. Our church budget has never been better. And I do not know who gives. We established that six years ago at the Brook Restaurant. I would never know who gives. But I'm telling you this for the good of your own soul. If you want to love Jesus and you want to have true eternal security, you've got to turn a loose of your stuff. Some of you need to double the amount that you're planning on putting in the offering plate today for your own goodness, for your own safety. I had to do that, I was studying for this army in the last month and I had to pull up my account and go, ah, I can give more than that. I've got to give more than that because I want to live. I don't want my hands so full of stuff that I don't have room for Jesus. And you may need to do that too. The only way to not love your stuff is to give it away. I don't care who you give it to, give it to the church, give it to the poor, give it to the nations, give it to missionaries, give it to the salvation army. You have to budget it and give it, just give it. We buy treasures in heaven, Jesus says, by giving to the poor, give your stuff. Second thing we need to do is after we receive grace, we give, then after we receive grace, we continue to receive. After buying the riches that no one can steal, we need to continue to receive grace by letting him cover our nakedness. He says, I will give you gold that will never, it has been refined by fire. And I will give you light garments so that no one can see your nakedness. What does that mean? It means Jesus wants to cover your shame. He wants to come to you in the place that you're the most ashamed. And the way we receive that is, as we've trusted him, we need to continue to trust him. And more and more we bring him the areas of our life that we are the most ashamed of. And we let him heal us in the places where we are the most ashamed. What are you the most ashamed of? Bianca reads me stories sometimes of, well she just reads me stories because I don't like to read, I like to watch football. And so she just tries to keep me up to date. And recently she read me a story of a woman who had a radical mastectomy to deal with her breast cancer. And she was healed from the cancer, but she was ashamed. And she mourned what her husband had lost. And she mourned the fact that her husband would no longer find her beautiful until he went and he addressed her and he kissed her scars. And as he kissed her scars, he healed her. Will you let Jesus kiss your scars? Some of you may have something that you just cannot possibly believe God would forgive you for. And if you do, then I would urge you to come to us as a church, come to me or bow or the session. Because one of the things that we've been told that we do, Jesus says that whatever you lose will be loot, wherever you free will be freed and whatever you lock down will be locked down. And there have been occasions when I've had the privilege to say as a minister of Jesus Christ, your sins are forgiven. Let Jesus tell you that you're forgiven. Confess your shame. Let him dress you. And then finally, you need to continue to search yourself. Once we've received grace, nothing is important to say this after you've received grace. Let that encourage you to go to the Lord and say, search me, Lord, show me the mirror. I don't want to be the guy with a bloody tissue. I don't want to miss it. I don't want to miss what is so obvious about me to you. Show me what I'm wrong. Psalm 139 says, search me God and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts. And see if there be any grievous way in me and lead me in the way ever lasting. Ask God for the eyeball, ask Him to take away the scales and enable you to see yourself so you can come to Him and ask Him to heal you. The most important question I've ever asked anyone in my life told you about it many times. After a wonderful, wonderful year where I had been turned down for 10 jobs and had four weeks left, four weeks on my job left. And I still couldn't figure out how all those idiots had somehow passed up on this. Obviously, they were idiots if they didn't want to hire this. And finally, I asked my friends, a good friend named Jean LaRue told me, well, Ricky, when I first met you, I thought you were a jerk. I was a sweet thing to do. And a good friend named Fritz Games told me, Ricky, you walk around with a chip on your shoulder that's so big that nobody can get close. And that was a sweet thing to do. Ask the Lord to search you and show you your sin and to lead you in the way ever lasting. Do you trust the Lord enough to do that? Do you still want to get yourself dressed up before church? Do you treat God like you're going out on a first date staring at yourself in the mirror, making yourself perfect? Or do you treat Him like somebody that you love? And that's a trust? And as you can say, am I missing anything? Trust Him. Please pray with me.