This is Ephesians, Ephesians. This is Revelation chapter three, verses 14 to 22. You can follow along with me on your tablet, iPad or Bible actually. And here is what it says. It says, and to the angel of the church in Laodicea write, the words of the amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of God's creation. I know your works. You are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot. So because you are lukewarm and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire so that you may be rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen, and salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see. Those whom I love, I reprove 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. Let's pray. Father, as we come to your word, we're hungry. So I pray God that we would be nourished and counseled and encouraged and convicted and excited about your word. And so I pray that as Pastor Jeremy comes and proclaims it, that your spirit would fill him and control him and use him and open up our hearts to hear what you have to say to us. May we leave not thinking, oh, that was really good. But may we leave going, wow, Jesus is amazing. And I need to change. And I need to be a missionary. So I pray father that your spirit would again work tonight for your glory and our good we pray amen It's it's good to be back with you I feel This is a little surreal for me. I feel a little bit like Paul, coming and being, just getting to see the churches that he planted and worked with and was ministering at, just to see and hear the report of what God's been doing in your life, even in the midst of an absence of a few months or so. And it's been encouraging for me to hear and to talk with some of you, even earlier tonight, just to hear what God's been doing. I'm definitely encouraged to know and to hear that God is still at work and He hasn't abandoned you. Not that we thought He would at all, but that we are encouraged and confident that God is continuing the work that He began in you. And it's a real joy to hear that and see that here among you. I guess I just want to give you a little update on what's been going on with the Wright Bowls in Wichita, so as we can just connect relationally once again. We're doing well. I've been there now at the church, which is called Journey the Way, now for seven months. And I've learned that in seven months of ministry at a church plant, Seven months in church planting time is a lot longer than seven months feels like. So much has happened and it's been an amazing seven-month run so far. We've really enjoyed the work that God has given us there, the ministry he has for both myself and Stephanie and our family has just been exciting and excellent. I'm the community pastor at the church there and so one of my responsibilities is to oversee our 15-plus missional communities that meet throughout the week all over the city of Wichita that seek to gather and exist and live as people sent on mission with the gospel of Christ to the neighborhoods in the context that they live in and so I I get to oversee and coach and lead are those leaders of those community groups and by extension than those community groups as well on a weekly basis and and getting to write material for them and I just shepherd the shepherds of of God's people there as we are look to be on mission with the gospel in the city and it's been exciting each one of these community groups has identified their neighborhood in their places this is an area that we are missionaries too and so they have that missionary heart and that desire and so it's it's been fantastic to see week in and week out hearing stories of how people met their neighbor and were able to build a relationship with them and even in the context of meeting their neighbor or co-worker be able to begin to to plant the seeds of the gospel and begin to share with them the transforming work of Jesus in their life and so week in and week out we we hear stories like that of what God's been doing and that's that's certainly very exciting Our baptism services, which we've had two of now, and I think we've baptized something like 15 people in those two services. Those are, it's amazing, they're parties. And really the church comes around these people that have newly converted, newly come to Christ, and they understand the gospel, and they profess Jesus. And it's this shot of adrenaline to our arm about the work of evangelism and the cause of the gospel going out. And so that's been super exciting. And one of the things that's maybe unique for me in perspective of living here in California for so long and now being in the Midwest and Wichita, there's still a tint and a hinge of Wichita being the Bible belt. And so you can drive all throughout the city of Wichita and see huge, huge facilities. This facility in Wichita, by the way, is medium size. It's okay. But in Wichita, they're massive, and yet these churches on the inside are dead. There's not many people there. They're not holding fast to the gospel, and so there's a real need for a resurgence of the gospel and church planting, and we're excited to see that in these gospel communities all over the city. just planting the gospel. So that's one facet of my ministry there is leading these community groups and doing that. And then another facet of our ministry there is a theological and missional training school that we started back in September called Porter Brook, Kansas. and Porter Brook Kansas is part of the Porter Brook network and it's very similar to what Pastor Chris is doing right now with the leadership class. We're seeking to train leaders for the sake of the gospel, with the gospel, to go out and to be missionaries in their businesses, in their homes, in their neighborhoods, just wherever they're at. So the byline for our school for Porter Brook Kansas is theology for everyone, mission for everyone. And we really want to train up leaders and so we've We've been excited to see our initial class of about 90 students from six different churches all over Wichita, Kansas, and then also from Missouri coming to be a part of some regional seminars that we have once a quarter, and then some in-house reading and study. And it's just been exciting to see God develop that and grow Porter Brook, Kansas. And if you have any interest in Porter Brook Kansas and you want to fly out every three or four months for one of our regional seminars, we will not turn down your application. We'd love to have you out and be a part of that. But there's also some free resources on that website. It's PorterBrookKansas.com. There's some free resources and some of our classes from our teachers that we bring in are there and they're available for you for free. So that's just a way that we can continue to maybe help build and encourage you here in Santa Rosa. But God's been doing some great things. We're still trying to figure out the rhythms and life of Wichita a little bit. We miss dearly the relationships and the friendships that we have here. For Stephanie and I, it's a great chance to be back with you and to see what God has been doing. And so I'm really grateful for that and grateful to see your progress in the gospel and what God has been doing. And I'm just glad to reconnect with you tonight. And hopefully after the service, we'll have a chance to spend a few more moments together. But I have been tasked to preach and to pull a Sergio Romo on this passage and this series and bring it to a close. So that is my goal tonight, is to talk about and to address Revelation 3, 14 to 22. And Josh was not kidding this morning. I will say that it was more God's working in making sure I understood the text more than it was me getting deep in the text to understand it. But Friday morning I woke up and had the Laodicean flu, if you will. And so it's been good to wrestle with this text. and good to be challenged by it. And so I wanna jump right in, but let me pray first tonight as we should again, and then we'll seek the face of the Lord together on this and dive right in. Father in heaven, we thank you that you are holy, that you are good. Lord, that you speak so clearly and so perfectly through your word. that you speak right to the center of us, you speak to our hearts, you divide bone and marrow, soul and spirit to expose us, not to shame us, not to guilt us, but because you love us and you desire to change us. And so Lord, tonight we rest and we ask for your grace to be humble tonight. Lord, we ask, I would ask that you would help us to hear you. Lord, give us your Holy Spirit again. Fill us with the Holy Spirit so that we might, as your Son has said, as your Word has said, so that we might, who have an ear, hear what you say to the churches. Lord, this is your word, it's not mine. So you have the authority here. You are Lord and King over this church. And so I pray again for your grace to teach us, to change us, to correct us, and to make us more like your son. Do this for your glory. We thank you for your word. We ask that you would preach to us tonight. In Jesus' name, amen. How do you know if you're deceived? How do you know if you're self-deceived? It's a tricky question because you probably don't. Maybe another way to ask that is what is the projection of yourself that you are trying to portray to other people? What is the image of yourself, the designed and desired view you want other people to have of who you are and whatever your accomplishments might be, whatever your identity might be, whatever you is. How do you self-portray yourself? One of the ways, and one of the sad things lately that researchers have seen, particularly among younger 20s, teens, 30s, is this what I'll call Facebook depression. the mental image of ourselves that we desire to portray to others. Many people today are just portraying it out on Facebook. And so they have one view of themselves and one way of looking at life and one ideal that they would like to present to the world of who they are and what they're like and how great, if you will, they might be so that the world will think such and such about them. And where the depression comes in is when that portrayal of a person's self to the world on social media, or what other form is there, is found to be lacking or false. When the image that we portray of ourselves doesn't match the image of who we really are, when the portrayed greatness of who we are doesn't match the humble mediocrity of who we really are, Depression sets in. People are crushed. I think there's a clinical medical statement being written about that probably even today. There's been research that's been happening on this. What does that do? What does it look like if a church thinks of itself one way, believes itself to be one way, portrays itself to be one way, and then the Lord of the church, Jesus, presents a different reality. It says this isn't the case. This, I believe, is the case for the church of Laodicea. This last letter that Jesus gives to the seven churches here in the book of Revelation, this last postcard of the New Testament, if you will, is Jesus writing to a church that has a false image of themselves and a false portrayal of themselves to themselves and to the world. And Jesus must come and in language that we would say is very severe, shake them from their self-deception so that they might see their true and real state. What if the church today had a false perception of itself? What would Jesus say to us? These letters in the book of Revelation were and are written to specific local churches in specific space and place, time, and history, but because they are the word of God and because they are the truth of God, which does not change, they are relevant, applied, and real for us tonight here. So we must not be proud and think that the letter to the church at Laodicea has nothing to do with our life today in 2012 in Santa Rosa, California. That is the great pride that we must fight against tonight. We must come humbly to this letter and ask ourselves, is this what Jesus is saying about us? Is this what Jesus is saying about my life? Is my spiritual self-portrayal of myself to others and to the world around me not the reality of who I really am? This is a hard letter, and in fact, I believe the reason this is the last letter in the book here of Revelation to these seven churches is because when any one of the six previous churches ignored the counsel, ignored the command, ignored the word of Christ to them, eventually they became like this church. This is the termination point, if you will, for every church that has a self-portrayal of itself that's not true. a reality that isn't right. And so Jesus, through the pen of John and the instrumentation of the Holy Spirit, writes to the church in Laodicea, and he says, I want you to see who you really are, because I want you to be healed. Jesus doesn't write this letter to the church just to inflict a wound upon them, just to bring them to their knees and say, see how messed up you are, I hope you figure it out. No, our gracious Lord and Savior, our King who has died for us and for our salvation, he writes a letter to wound them so that he might be the one who heals them. Tonight, that's the sense that I want to bring this letter to us in. It may wound us. In fact, my prayer throughout this, as I've been reading and praying and studying for this, my prayer is that if this needs to be the letter that wounds us, may it be so, God. But let your grace, and we'll see the grace of Jesus here, let that be the thing that heals us. So let's look at this letter tonight. First of all, let me talk about the city. This is written to the angel of the church in Laodicea. Laodicea, a modern city in Turkey. It's actually been razed now and it's ruins. But this city in modern day Turkey in the Roman Empire was actually a very influential city. The city itself was rather wealthy. There were three main enterprises in the city that made it influential in the Roman Empire. First of all, it was a banking capital. The commerce and the industry, because Laodicea was a banking empire, was amazing. They minted their own coins. They were fantastic with the banking industry. Not only that, but they were a medical city. They had some of the best medicine. They were able to take the chemicals and some of the metallic material in the water and other things around the city and develop medicine for the culture, for the region. So they were a highly cultural city in that they were a high banking city, Very good industry. High medical city. Healing, helping others. But also, Laodicea was a fashion center. The city here was known for its garment making, its impressive wardrobes, its clothing. Laodicea was very much a cosmopolitan, metropolitan city. Banking, financial influence. medicine, medical influence, fashion, culture making. Huge influence. The city was extremely wealthy, extremely well-preserved and well-protected, so much so that in AD 60, a massive earthquake hit the region, and the Laodicean city, the Roman government came in to offer assistance, to offer financial support, to help them rebuild the city. Laodicea rejected it all. They said to the governor, no, no, we don't need your help. We've got the funds, we've got the cash, we'll take care of it. And many scholars surmise that they were actually glad the earthquake hit so that they could build the city more glorious and in a greater and more fantastic way than it was previous. They were like, eh, we don't like this. Earthquake hits, great. Let's get the renovation project started. Which tells us another thing about the city of Laodicea. Hugely independent. pride runs through the city, they don't need a thing. Which is interesting because that's a word that Jesus has to say to the church in the city. In fact, one of the things that I wonder about and that I see in this text so much is that here is a church that has completely become saturated by the ethos and by the nature of the city. Here is a church who has bought all the cultural baggage of the ways of the city without discernment, without regard to the gospel, and completely become like the city. They haven't been gospel-centered, and so the church in many instances, became like the city. And so that's the city and the state of the city. One other note, and this will come into play in just a minute, you'll see this here, but the city didn't have a great water system. The water from that city was brought in through aqueducts, and so the cold water would come in from Colossae through a series of aqueducts, and the warm water in from Areopolis And by the time it came in through those aqueducts, by the time it hit Laodicea, it was so tepid, so lukewarm, that it was useless. That'll be an important note in just a minute, as I'm sure you'll see. But that's the city of Laodicea. That's who this letter is addressed to, this proud, independent, culture-making, influential city, and particularly the church in that city. Now who's writing this? Here's the surgeon of this letter. This letter reads, and all of these letters have read, like a doctor coming to the side of the patient and saying, let's examine your condition. There's a problem here, let's address it. So let's understand the surgeon here and let's understand his credentials to address the situation. Jesus writes and he says, these are the words of the amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of God's creation. Here Jesus is the one who says, I am the faithful and true witness. In a city and a church that struggles with a projection and a perception of itself, Jesus comes and he says, I'm the one who speaks truth. I'm the one who see clearly. And what I have to say is absolutely true. How I diagnose you as a church and as a city is right on, it's 100%. I am the faithful witness. I will not lie to you, I will not deceive you, I will not trick you for gain. I am faithful and true in what I say. My word stands. And so he says, I am the amen. We normally slide the amen at the end of the prayer saying, let it be so God. And Jesus says, that's me. God's will, my work, I do it. I'm the faithful one. I'm the true one. I am the witness about your condition in the city. But furthermore, he says, the beginning, or my translation says, the beginning of God's creation. Now this word beginning here, I actually think there's a better translation for it. and some of our modern English translations use different word there. The word beginning here could actually be translated ruler or authority. I think that's the projection and the state that Jesus is seeking to speak from here. Not just the beginning as if he was the first of God's creation, or the first, but maybe the, and the best way to say it, the first in rank, the highest in rank, the ruler or the authority over all creation. This is similar to what Paul writes in Colossians 1, that Jesus being the beginning of God's creation, the firstborn over all things. He uses the same words that John uses here, this idea of rulership and authority. Jesus is saying, I'm the king. I'm the ruler and authority over all that God has made, even Laodicea, even you, the church. So he presents himself here as the surgeon, as the one who is the ruler and the truth. The king who speaks truth to this city. He's the one who says, here is how you are. Here's how I see you. Here's what's true and what's not. Now unlike some of the other letters here in this, Jesus' tone, the way that he presents himself here, is a strong presentation. He's not seeking to be comforting as much as he is here to challenge them, to rock them. He wants to strip away their delusion of themselves. And so to do that, he has to blast away any preconceived idea that Jesus is here just to be your boyfriend. Jesus is just here to be your fuzzy friend. Jesus is here to say, no, I'm the ruler and the Lord and the truth. And you need to hear truth. He comes as a surgeon to a patient who has terminal cancer. and says there's one way to fix this, and I'm not gonna fudge it, I'm not gonna tell it with sugar on top, I'm gonna be direct and clear, here it is, so that we can deal with it. That is the presentation of Jesus himself, the king, the truth, the faithful witness to the church at Laodicea. Okay, let's buckle up now, because here comes the hard part. Look with me at verse 15. Here's the diagnosis or the problem that Jesus sees with this church, and this is from verse 15 down to verse 17. Three things that Jesus speaks about, three problems that they have as a church. The first one is there in verse 15, it's spiritual barrenness, spiritual barrenness. He says, I know your works. Jesus, the faithful, the true witness, who knows all things, who sees all things, He comes, he's like, I know what you've been doing. I know how you are, I know your works. You are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot. So because you are lukewarm and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. Now Jesus here isn't saying that he would prefer them to be either spiritually cold and comatose and completely devoid of the gospel and have no desire for him, or to be flaming hot with white passion and zealous for him in everything. That's not the contrast that Jesus is making here between spiritual apathy and spiritual zeal. The contrast that Jesus is making here is with regard to their water system. Cold water, as we know, is useful. I would prefer to drink cold water. I have to tell you, don't, well, TJ's is gonna hear this, and don't visit Wichita in the summer. It's terribly hot. Like 40 some days of 100 plus temperatures, you visit Wichita in the summer. But don't visit Wichita in the summer, unless you have cold water, because it's miserable. Cold is useful. Jesus was applying that here. He's saying your spiritual condition, your spiritual works, They're tepid, they're lukewarm. They provide no use, no help, as cold water does. Or the other extreme, hot water. Hot water, extremely useful for cleansing, for cleaning, for purity. As this water, this cold and hot water flowed into the city through the aqueduct system, it would pick up these minerals and these supplements, not like the fluoride in our water, but other sort of things that made the water absolutely disgusting in taste. It was useless. Useless water. And so Jesus says, I know your works. And your works are not like cold water, which is useful for refreshment, for help, for strengthening. And your works aren't like hot water, which is useful for cleansing, washing, purifying. Your works are like the water in your city. They're useless. They're barren. And so he says in verse 16, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth." I did a little research on this, and I think the Greek is really emphatic here. The Greek for this, spit you out of my mouth, is to vomit. That's what Jesus is getting at. It's probably the Greek word barfizo, you know? Just, you make me want to vomit. These are These are some of the strongest words in the New Testament from our Lord and Savior to a church. What you're doing, Jesus says, is spiritually barren. It's not hot, it's not cleansing, it's not refreshing, it's not cold, it's not useful. And so because of that, I want to spit you out of my mouth. You're lukewarm. Now what are these works that Jesus is talking about? I think here he's looking at this church that is parading around and pretending around and acting like they're doing something. Like something is happening spiritually in their midst. They might be gathering, having services, they might be reading scripture, but the gospel isn't being advanced at all. The truth of God's word, lives aren't being changed. The church has become a country club. And the country club is rather comfortable with itself. Things are fine, but there's no fruit of the Holy Spirit being produced. There's no patience, there's no joy, there's no love. It's just a group of people being comfortable together, settling in together, and just sparring at one another. I imagine in Laodicea there was grumbling, there was contention, there was divisiveness. Spiritually, they were barren. Why? because they had forgotten Christ. This first problem is huge. The problem is so huge that we today, in 2012, can believe our churches to be effective, believe our churches to be doing something, to accomplishing something, and to really be spiritually barren. I mourn the state of the city of Wichita with regard to churches. We as a church plant are three years into our launch as a church plant at Journey the Way. And we meet in a facility of another church in our city. They have been very gracious to us and allowed us to meet in their fellowship hall. So we pack in there Sunday morning after Sunday morning. But we kind of feel like the 30-year-old that lives in mom's basement. We know that we should have moved out a while ago, and so does she, but she likes having us around. and we can't find another place yet you know that's just that's our that's our state but in the last few months we've been looking for and praying that God would give us a location and so Chad our lead pastor and myself have been going from just opportunity to opportunity in the city we've we've heard of other churches that are selling their facility or or other places that are options. I cannot tell you, I can't count, really, I cannot count the number of church buildings that I have been in, in Wichita, where we've come into a room like this, and there's 40 people that meet there on a Sunday morning, and they say, you know, we're a vital church. Something's happening, and we see no advance of the gospel. In fact, we've stood in many buildings that at one time were were beautiful cathedrals for the glory of God. We had heard stories of the room filled to the brim, singing the praises of God, and now they sit empty and abandoned and in decrepit state because they didn't care for the gospel. They didn't care for Christ, and they projected themselves like the church at Laodicea does here. We're fine. We're okay. and yet they're spiritually barren. How do we know if a church is spiritually viable? We see the fruit of the spirit. We see love in her midst. We see patience in her midst. We see joy. We see thankfulness. The things that God himself produces in his people We see passion for the gospel. We see evangelism and mission going out both locally and globally. We see people that are more in love with Christ than they are with their preferences in the state of their country club. We see sacrificial people laying down their lives for the sake of Christ and his gospel. The church in Laodicea was spiritually bare. Their works were empty. Jesus says, because you're neither hot nor cold, because you're not useful, I will spit you out of my mouth. The second diagnosis of the problem that he gives is their spiritual boasting in the city. Their spiritual boasting, look with me at the first part of verse 17. For you say, so now Jesus, he brings the record to them. He got this on recording, had it written, you know, it was in the minutes of the last elder meeting, and he presents it to them and says, here's what you said about yourself. For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing. Whoa. I'm rich, I have prospered, and I have need of nothing. No, no, Jesus, we don't need the Holy Spirit to be at work here in our midst. We got it covered. No, no, we don't need help from someone else. We're doing pretty good here on our own. No, Lord, today we really don't need We don't need your grace and the sending of revival and your work in our midst. We're prosperous. Have you seen our building? Have you seen our budget? Have you seen our programs? We got it. And so the church at Laodicea would boast. I need nothing. How you guys doing in Thyatira? Oh, you're struggling over there? Oh, that's too bad. Hey, we're great. We don't need anything. We'll pray for you, you know, maybe. Sardis, you guys are really struggling right now. Just going through the grinder. Bless you, we're great, we're great. Spiritual boasting became a condition of this church. It really has to hurt when Jesus uses your own words against you to confront you. They're spiritually boasting. So spiritual barrenness, spiritual boasting, and then thirdly here, spiritual blindness. You say, I'm rich, I have prospered, I need nothing. And here's where you're blind, not realizing. You've projected yourself as great. Everybody on Facebook thinks you are the church to be at, you are it. Not realizing that you're wretched, pitiable. poor, blind, naked. Jesus just cuts at the heart of everything that Laodicea was about. Well, you're a big banking center. Oh yeah, your church, spiritually, you're bankrupt. You're a great medical condition, great medical city. Yeah, heal your blindness. Laodicea was known for their medicine of making an eye salve that you could rub on your eyes to help you see better. Maybe a modern form of glasses in some way. It was a medicine that they developed there. And Jesus says, you guys, the ones who invented this eye medicine, and you disperse it all over the known world, yeah, you're blind spiritually. How do you like that? Oh, and the fashion industry. Yeah, you got clothes on, but spiritually you're naked. You're shamed. There's a blindness. They couldn't even see their own condition. What does it take for a people who are self-deceived to see the truth? It takes a work of God and the truth of God to come and confront them and say, here's how you are. Here's how you are. You're barren, you're boasting, you don't need anything, you don't think you need anything, and you're blind. You think you're fine, not realizing, wretched. You're of no use, you're pitiable. You're in such a discrepant state, you're poor. and you're blind and naked. Oof. Could this be the church today? Could this be our church? That we would look at ourselves and say, hey, we've got it covered. We're great. We've got the big building, we've got the budgets, we've got the programs. What do we need? We're doing fine. We're advancing it forward like, yeah, we're great. We read the Bible Psalm. I asked that question because we have to wrestle with it from God's word. I have to wrestle with this for our own church in Wichita. Could this be us? If we sense the Spirit saying to us, yes, this is us, yes, this is the condition of my heart, yes, maybe I have even projected myself in a way that says, personally, I'm fine. I don't need anything else from God, you know? We could just take this to the individual nature. Is God's work growing in you? Are you spiritually barren personally? There's no fruit of the Spirit in evidence in your life. There's boasting. Yeah, I'm doing fine spiritually. Memorized 100 verses. How about you? Oh, one? No. Wish you were as good as me. Blind, and yet we can't even see our own condition, that we're proud, arrogant, dead on the inside. What's the cure here? What's the cure? Verse 18, look with me here, as Jesus gives the remedy. The cure here is Jesus. It's himself. There's no other thing that he's going to offer them other than himself and himself fully to them. I counsel you. The surgeon saying, okay, here's the deal. You want to fix this? You see the diagnosis. You're dead, you're dying, you're useless. So here's how I want you to fix this. And here's my prescription to you. I counsel you. Buy from me gold refined by fire so that you may be rich. And white garments so that you may clothe yourself and the shame of your nakedness not be seen. And salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see. Here's the cure, Jesus gives it in three ways. First of all, Jesus is the one who provide the works that make us rich. He goes back to the banking metaphor of the city. He says, I counsel you to buy. Okay, if we're gonna do the banking thing, you need to buy something. You need to buy from me gold. If you want to be rich, you need to buy from me gold refined in fire. This idea of gold refined in fire is the idea of pure gold, gold that has been through the struggle, it's been through the fire, it has been refined to the degree that it is pure. And so he says to this church that thinks so much of themselves, you're spiritually poor, and yet you need to buy from me. How do we do that? How do we buy from him? Jesus isn't saying, hey, open up your wallets, send me a few hundred dollars, and we'll make this right. People that are poor spiritually, that are bankrupt and empty spiritually, they can't buy anything. Poor people have no way to buy things. And so Jesus is saying, hey, the condition of you as a church is that you're poor, you have nothing. And so to counsel them to buy something sounds a little bit upside down. What Jesus is pushing them to see is their bankruptcy spiritually. He's kicking them back to the Sermon on the Mount so that they might go, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn so that they might be comforted. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, so that they may be filled. Jesus is pushing them back to see, listen, you can't buy anything. You have nothing. And so what are you gonna do? You're just gonna come to me. And I'm gonna give you myself as grace. I'm going to give you myself because I love you. The works that make us rich, the works that Jesus says you don't have, laodicea, that we might not have, Jesus says, I'm the one who provides those. Buy from me gold refined by fire so that you may be rich. That gold refined by fire, that works of righteousness that Jesus speaks about, it's the truth of the gospel. That we could not live the perfect life that a holy God demands, that we deserve death and hell and condemnation forever, and yet Jesus, The second member of the Trinity became a human being and lived the perfect life we couldn't live. He lived for our righteousness. Make no mistake, God demands righteousness and God gifts it to us because Jesus has lived to provide us righteousness. It's the doctrine of imputed righteousness, alien righteousness. We can't earn it. We can't buy it. We can't obtain it by our own merit. But Jesus, because he lived the perfect life, we couldn't, gifts it to us. He provides the works that make us rich. Not only that, he then begins to take us to the next metaphor, the clothing metaphor. Buy gold refined by fire so that you may be rich. And then the second thing that Jesus provides is the clothes that make us righteous. The righteous garments that we are in need of to stand before a holy God. Buy gold, the works that make us rich, so that you may be rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself. He says, here's a city that's big on fashion, and yet spiritually you're naked. You have no righteousness. You are shamed. Nakedness, as in today's culture, which amazes me, what San Francisco did just not too long ago in the election, amazed Wichita too, amazes us that nakedness is still a shameful thing. And so Jesus says, hey, you're spiritually naked, and that's shameful. You need to be clothed in righteousness. So where are we gonna get that? By working real hard and trying to be good and doing all that we can to obtain that righteousness from God? No. The righteousness we need is the righteousness of Christ. His active righteousness on our behalf in his perfect life. He gifts that to us. Jesus says, you come to me. You turn from your sin, you turn from your pride, you turn from your folly of yourself, and you come to me, and I will make you righteous, so that when my Father looks upon you, when he sees you, he will see you clothed with my righteousness, as if you've never sinned, perfectly justified before the Father. He says, come to me, and I will provide you the clothes that make you righteous. I'll provide the works that make you rich, the clothes that make you righteous. The third thing Jesus says is, come to me and I will give you salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see. Jesus is the one who gives us the medicine to open our eyes. the salve to make us see. Again, he goes to the medical nature of the city and the ointment that they had developed for the eyes. And he says, you think you have it there? But you're spiritually blind. You can't even see yourself well or rightly. So come to me. Come to me and I will give you the vision to see who you really are. I will open your eyes to let you see the truth of who I am. I will heal you and allow you to see This is what Paul talks about in 2 Corinthians 3 and 4, that Jesus Christ is the one who lifts the veil of blindness from our eyes so that we all, with unveiled face, 2 Corinthians 3, 18, with unveiled face, may behold the glory of the Lord and be transformed into the same image, that we might, as we see Jesus, be transformed into the image of Jesus from one degree of glory to another, for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. Jesus says, you come to me. You want to see spiritually? You come to me. You buy from me, but wait, you're poor and bankrupt, so you can't buy anything, so I'll gift it to you. I'll gift it to you by virtue of the fact that I have lived the perfect, righteous life you couldn't live. I'll gift it to you by the fact that I have died in your place for your sin and absorbed the wrath of God for you. and taken the full weight of his punishment for you, so that you might be forgiven and received and adopted as my son and my daughter. And then I have been raised to life again, so that you may have life with me forever, so that you may be transformed from one degree of glory to another. Jesus says, you can't buy anything, you come to me, you come to me. Look at verse 19 then, he begins to push this home. We might look at this and go, man, this is just a hard letter, hard. And Jesus says, no, those whom I love, I reprove and discipline. So be zealous and repent. Here's the parental line in this. He says, I'm not writing this to be hard on you for the sake of being hard on you. I'm not writing this to be shaming you just for the sake of that. I love you. and I reprove and I discipline the ones I love. Let this just blow your mind for a second, because it blows my mind. Here's this church that Jesus just a few verses ago says, I want to vomit you. And he says, but I love you, which is why I'm saying these things about you. I'm trying to speak the truth in love, which he does as the faithful and true witness. And because I love you, I discipline you. So how do we respond? If Jesus is saying this to us tonight and saying this about our spiritual condition personally and maybe even corporately as a church, how do we respond? Be zealous and repent. Jesus calls us to the gospel again to see the fact that we are spiritually bankrupt, that we are poor, naked, pitiable, blind, to see our condition as sinners before Him, a holy God, and to go to Him and repent. and say we've been trusting ourselves, we've been thinking much of ourselves, we've been believing much about ourselves and yet we're empty, we're barren, we've been braggards and proud, we've thought we've accomplished something for our own glory and we haven't and we're blind and we need you. Be zealous and repent. The imagery of verse 20 is so helpful. Oftentimes, this is used in the context of evangelism. Jesus says, 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 him with me. But this is in the midst of a letter about church discipline, really. And this is in the midst of a letter of correction to the church itself. And Jesus is saying here, this is an example or an illustration. He's saying, I want fellowship with you. So imagine me at the side of your door knocking, because we've been distant, because you've been a braggart, you've been proud, you've been self-promoting, you've been independent, you haven't needed me at all. You've said, I need nothing. And you've heard my hard word. And so imagine me there knocking, saying, open the door, repent. That's the idea of opening the door, it's seeing our condition, seeing the state of our hearts, personally and corporately, and walking and coming to the Lord in repentance, saying, forgive us, here's who we are, heal us, make us right, cleanse us. He says, I stand at the door knock and if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in. We must not get it in our heads that the idea of repentance means that we move towards God and that maybe He moves towards us. We must see very clearly from this text the promise that if we will move towards God in repentance, if we will confess our sin, our self-righteousness, our independence, our self-deception before Him as God, And we will change our minds about these things, and change our hearts about these things, and change our attitudes about these things. He will absolutely come to us. He won't hold us at arm's length. Oh no, you're still messy. You've got to earn it back still. You've got to try harder and then I'll get to the relationship with you. He says, no, if you repent, which he illustrates by saying, open the door, I'll come. In the first century culture, the idea of eating a meal with someone was a concept of friendship and fellowship. Today we just eat for the sake of eating. It's more functional than it is formal. But in this first century culture, the people that you ate with and identified yourself were, was a huge statement to the world. Who you ate with was massive. And Jesus is saying here to a church that has independently disregarded him and said, I have no need of you, Jesus. He's saying, if you repent, I'm there to heartbeat. I'm there to be intimate friends with you, to fellowship with you. I will come into him and eat with him and he with me. If we need a vivid illustration of this from the Gospels, think about Jesus walking through Jericho. And the crowds are there surrounding him, trying to get a glimpse of him. And in their midst, there is one of the men of the city who is, by everyone's estimation, one of the most discrepant, horrible sinners in the world. Zacchaeus, the wee little man, a tax collector, an extortioner, a traitor, a vile sinner. And Zacchaeus ends up in a tree to see Jesus. And Jesus comes to him and says, Zacchaeus, I'm going to your house today. And Jesus goes in and dines with him And Zacchaeus repents. And his repentance is shown out in the way that Zacchaeus, as we read in Luke at the end of the story, Zacchaeus says, my repentance shows itself in the way that I will repay everyone I've wronged. I'll make it right. Not because he's earning Jesus' favor, but because he already has it. Jesus has already identified him as friend. He's already dined with him. Repentance has already happened. Would we see that illustration in a personal scale? And understand that's the kind of relationship that Jesus designs to have with us on corporate scale. That if we would go to him, repent, open the door if you will, he will dine with us. Verse 21 and 22 give a concluding promise to us. The one who conquers, I will grant him to sit on my throne as I also conquered and sat down with my father on his throne. The reward is there. Jesus says, I will bring you in and give you full rights as heirs and rulers with me. The faithful and true witness who addresses himself at the beginning of the letter says to the one who conquers, the one who holds fast, the one who hears the spirit of God and the word of God and repents, who endures, who stands fast. As I conquered, I'll grant him to sit on my throne, be a co-ruler with him. And so the word is prevalent here. Let us listen again. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Holy Spirit of God says to the churches. Friends, let us repent. Let us see where we stand individually, corporately. Let us have a right perception of ourself based on the gospel, based on what Jesus has done, not our own works and not our own merits and our own achievements and our own self masquerade. But let us see ourselves rightly, repent where we need to, and be conquerors. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the church. Let me pray. Our purpose is to lift up the Lord by living out the word, loving one another, and leading others to Christ. Be sure to visit us on the web at www.srbible.org or come visit us in person at 4575 Badger Road, Santa Rosa, California 95409. You can also give us a call at 707-538-2385.