Please turn to REVELATION 3:14-22. This is our main text for this message.
‘To the angel of the church in Laodicea, write:
‘These are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the ruler of God’s creation. I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm – neither hot nor cold – I am about to spit you out of My mouth.
You say, “I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.” But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see.
Those whom I love, I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest and repent. Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him , and he with Me. To him who overcomes, I will give the right to sit with Me on My throne, just as I overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne. He who has an ear, let Him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.’
Many people believe God’s Word is passé and out-of-date. I disagree. I believe God’s Word is as up-to-date as tomorrow morning’s headlines. I also believe that God has a message for His people. The Lord Jesus dictated messages to John for the seven churches of Asia Minor. In these letters, Jesus both commends and condemnsl He exhorts and corrects; and He deals specifically with the needs of each congregation.
In our passage, He speaks to the Laodiceans. Most conservative scholars believe that these letters have significant value to the church today, too. The message found in this passage also deals with the same attitudes and situations found in today’s church.
The most glaring problem for the Laodiceans was that they were lukewarm. Christ says, "I wish that you were either cold or hot." when a person is lukewarm, they feel no passion. They feel no excitement. They feel no Jesus.
Another problem was they thought of themselves as already having everything they needed. They equated everything, including their spiritual well-being on their wealth and possessions. But God saw them as "...wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.” Spiritual wealth only comes after a person realizes they don’t have anything without Jesus. And, what you really have need for more than anything is only found in Jesus. Jesus give the lukewarm a choice between God’s judgment and God’s blessing.
I see that …
1. ONE HAS THE DESIRE – THE OTHER ONE DOESN’T
In VERSE 20 we come to the main message in today’s sermon.
‘Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him and he with Me.’
Notice the exclamation point at the first sentence. ‘Here I am!’ Jesus is trying to get our attention, but we seem to be preoccupied with other things. Jesus is knocking but we cannot hear Him because we have been distracted. He says if anyone will hear Him and open the door, he will come in. That is a promise from our Savior, but … do we hear? Are we even listening?
Theologians believe that this invitation is meant for sinners who have never received Christ, and for believers who have relaxed their walk with Christ to the point that it is all but nonexistent. I agree with them. But today, I want to concentrate more on the believers who sit in church every Sunday but don’t really feel the presence of Christ in their hearts. Today, I want to talk about today’s lukewarm churches and the lukewarm members sitting in those churches.
Is this not where the church is today? Look at the majority of churches and the majority of Christians today. We have everything - except a close walk of fellowship with our God. We live the Christian life without feeling any passion. We have relegated Jesus to an unused closet in our lives. And He is standing and knocking, seeking entrance into our hearts. We had better start listening to Him, as we are coming into the midnight hour in the age of the church, and we need to pay attention to His fellowship more now than ever before!
Christ wants to be the very center of attention in our hearts. He desires personal fellowship and communion with us on a minute-to-minute basis. Because of our sin, we were supposed to be nailed to the cross, but He went to the cross in our place. And now, He wants for us to love Him for that, but we are too distracted to listen and we are making Him stand outside the back door, ignored and in some cases denied.
He begins this verse by saying, “Here I am!” He says it boldly and with no hesitation on His part - to get our attention. EXCLAMATION POINT. In other words, “Look at Me!” The God of Glory is taking the time to seek fellowship with His lowly creations! This is a personal invitation. He is not seeking us collectively at this point, but individually!
Just the fact that Jesus would even have a fleeting thought about us is so amazing! In PSALM 8:4, it is written,
‘what is man that You are mindful of him, the Son of Man that you care for Him?’
Can you see His feelings toward us? He is standing and knocking. This denotes continual action. Many people will knock on someone’s door for a few seconds and then go away. The picture here is of Christ standing and continually knocking. Only someone who genuinely desires our company would subject themselves to such inattention. He must really love us to patiently wait for us to answer His knock.
He has the desire to come in, but too many people don’t seem to have the desire to let Him in. One has the desire, the other doesn’t. Could we blame Jesus if he turned and walked away from us? No, not at all, but He never has and He never will. It is we who walk away from Him.
We put things off all the time, even when it is for our best interest. What I don’t understand is …
2. WHY THE DELAY?
"...if anyone hears My voice..."
How can it be that God Himself waits for us and we Him? I am reminded of MATTHEW 23:37, as Jesus stood and looked out over Jerusalem.
‘O Jerusalem, Jerusalem … you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.’
We can understand the lost and unsaved not responding to Christ. But how can His very own children let Him stand outside and just keep knocking and knocking? We ignore His calling in our failure to confess our sins. We ignore His calling when we spend our days without seeking Him in prayer. We ignore His calling when we forget to read the Bible and when we lose interest in attending church regularly. Does anyone in today’s lukewarm churches hear His voice at all?
What an honor it is that He still loves us! What an honor it is for Him to be concerned with our eternal welfare. If someone famous arrived at our door, we would rush to open the door, wouldn’t we?. We would usher them in and ask how we could accommodate them. But Christ seeks audience with us, and we not only don’t let Him in, we don’t even hear the knock.
He is standing at the door and saying, “Here I am!” I for one feel that the voice of our Savior should never be ignored, and that is what I am afraid that many churchgoers across this land are doing today. In the Gospel of John, Jesus said that His sheep hear His voice and follow Him. Are we listening for His voice? Are we following Him? If we aren’t, can we really be considered His sheep?
I know that we get all tangled up in the life we live here on earth, and we all have intentions of someday, ‘giving our all’ to Jesus, but what I don’t understand is, knowing the end of the story as we do, why do we delay in doing so.
I also see some really good things in this verse. Like finding …
3. UNEXPECTED JOY
"...if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him and he with Me.’
I try to always be very respectful of other people’s territory. That is one reason I normally do not go visiting without calling ahead to make sure it is a good time for the person I am visiting. The reason is not disavowing the fellowship, but if you don’t have a personal rapport already established with someone, you are not totally comfortable with them coming over and catching you in your ‘unawares’ so to speak. Now, that being said, there are exceptions to every rule.
One exception is in case of any kind of emergency or desperate situation. Another exception is when somebody knocks on your door and you answer it to find a family member or loved friend – especially one you haven’t seen in a long time. Have you ever had that happen? There is a certain excitement and joy in inviting that person into your home. That is how we should open the door to answer Christ. We should invite Him in, because nobody can ever love us more than He does. Nobody can ever want a more personal relationship with us than he does. And we can find nobody else we should love as much as we should love Him.
The believer who chooses to lay all aside to walk with Christ on a daily basis has a glorified existence. He received personal friendship with Jesus. Jesus said that there is no greater love than when a man lays down his life for his friends. That is what Jesus wants of us. He wants us to lay down our earthly existence so we can walk with Him unhindered by the things of this world. Jesus also said that if we do what He commands us to do, we are no longer servants but friends with Him.
We think we are in control of our lives, but we aren’t. If we could see the reality of it all, we would clearly see that either Jesus is in control of our lives, or Satan is, but we surely aren’t. But if we would just lay aside this assumed control, and invite Jesus in, we would find unexpected joy that no words can every describe.
And once we do let Jesus in, we would receive …
4. THE UNPLANNED MEAL
‘I will come in and eat with him and he with Me.’
Eating not only helps us stay alive, eating is a time we use to fellowship with others. How many times have we told somebody to meet us for lunch, or how many times have we asked each other to go to dinner? The Gospels are full of illustrations from Jesus about great suppers. He used the picture of a supper to illustrate the Gospel and salvation. Last week, we talked about a supper Jesus went to at the house of a man known as Simon the Leper.
Every Sunday, we join in to celebrate Communion, in remembrance of what Jesus initiated at the Last Supper. Supper is referred to as a time of fellowship and communion in the Bible. And here we are, being promised by Jesus – the Son of God – that if we will but answer the door, He will come in and have fellowship and communion with us! How amazing that this Heavenly person would even think about us, much less want to have a personal relationship with us.
This same person is crowded out of many churches and is ignored in the hearts of most of His people. He desires our fellowship. His moment-by-moment presence is available if we want it. He is with us all the time, unfortunately, most of that time is spent knocking - - trying to get our attention. But for those who do respond, there is a special presence offered.
Jesus Christ calls to us, in the midnight hour of the church age, to sup with Him.
I saw on the news the other night about how many business decisions are made over dinners. When a man wants to impress a certain young lady, he will take her to dinner. If she wants to impress him, she might cook dinner for him. And we can use a supper with Jesus to effect many things, too. We can use this time of supper with Jesus to speed the healing of our souls, to strengthen us in Him, and for giving us the insight we need to continue to be devout Christians. He accomplishes His purpose in our lives by supping with us.
An old woman lived in a small cottage by the seashore. She had only one relative, a grown son who lived and worked at sea. He went for years without seeing her, never even dropping by to check on her in her old age. Rather than being hurt at his disrespect, she thought of him every day and dreamed of him every night. Why? Because she loved him with a love he could not imagine: A mother’s love.
And we must realize that Jesus loves us with a love that is so great that none of us can imagine, either. But, too many times, we find that those who go to church even on a regular basis, ignore Jesus a place in their hearts just as much as that sea going son ignored His mother.
Would the Victory Singers please come back on stage?
This year is already ¼ gone. We are in the middle of the countdown to Christ. It is midnight for the church age as God’s elect look for the return of Christ. We have no idea how long this countdown will last. It could be over tonight. It might not be over for a thousand years. But every day it does get closer. And the closer it gets, the more we need to be prepared. And there is only one thing we need to do, in order to be fully prepared in every way.
We need to listen to the knock as Jesus tries to get our attention, and then simply answer the door and let our dear Savior in. As we go into our time of invitation, are you listening to Jesus as He calls you?
INVITATION
