A Great Invitation

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Transcript:

Turn with me, if you would, to Revelation chapter 3. I told you this morning that what we talked about this morning was going to be the last of our messages on Revelation chapter 3, and I was wrong. I had something else entirely different planned for tonight as far as the message, and yet as I was coming here tonight, as I was in my office, as I was sitting in the back during the song service, I just kept feeling led to revisit this passage from this morning.

Because there’s a part at the end here that it wasn’t intentional, but there’s a part that I just kind of skipped over. I read it to you, but didn’t really talk about it because we focused on the beginning part of the passage. And honestly, I was just talking to a friend on Thursday who’s a retired pastor, and we were talking about those times that we have all of our notes planned out and we’re ready to go and God changes the plan at the last minute and how much we hate that.

You know, it’s always good to follow the leadership of the Holy Spirit, but it bugs me when my plans get changed. So bear with me. We’re going to look back at this because I didn’t want to completely ignore these last three verses of Revelation chapter 3 that we just kind of read over this morning.

And if you recall back, we were talking about the church at Laodicea. Jesus came to chasten them as he had come to all seven of these churches, talking about what they were doing right and what they were doing wrong. Now five of them, he had a mixture of the two.

The church at Philadelphia he came to and had nothing negative to say about them, except they were small, and even at that he commended them for their faithfulness, even when they were small and weak. The church at Laodicea is the complete opposite. that they were big and strong, and yet he has nothing good to say to them about what they’re doing.

And he tells them, you’ve got serious problems that need to be fixed. You’re neither hot nor cold. I won’t go into all that again, that explanation of that.

Most of you were here this morning. But he tells them, you’ve got problems, and they need to be fixed. And we would look at a church like that, and we might look at a church like that today, with such huge problems, and say, there’s just no hope for that church.

I have seen and I have preached at and I’ve filled in at and I’ve visited churches that were kind of like this, maybe not this exact problem, but they had such big problems that I would leave there thinking, if this church was a horse, they’d just have to shoot it. I mean, there’s just no.. .

Short of Jesus himself walking in and saying, I’m the pastor here, there is no hope for turning this church around. We look sometimes at problems from our human perspective, And it just seems like everything is so far gone that there’s no hope for that person. There’s no hope for that church.

There’s no hope for that group of people. They’re just done for. But even in the midst of, they’ll never change.

They’ll never get any better. This is just, things are bad and they’re only going to get worse. Folks, even in the midst of all the problems that were going on in the church at Laodicea, problems so significant that Jesus looked at them and said, you people, the way you’re acting, you make me sick.

That’s what he meant by spew you out of my mouth. You people, the way you’re acting makes me sick. Even in the midst of circumstances like that, there was still hope when he told them there is something for you to do.

There is a way to turn this around. And not that it was going to be easy. The bigger the problems, the harder it is to turn something around.

And the longer it takes and the longer you’ve gone in the course of those problems, the longer it takes to turn something around. I keep hearing, and I don’t know why unless it’s God just trying to tell me something. But I keep hearing from different sources.

I’ve heard it on the radio now. I’ve heard it on a TV show. I’ve heard somebody say it in conversation.

I think I might have read it in an article just several times in the last couple weeks, this example that it takes 18 miles to turn a battleship around completely 180 degrees from the way it was going. Again, I’m hearing that from several sources. And that makes me think, okay, somebody’s trying to get my attention here.

A little speedboat, you can turn around pretty fast. A lawnmower, they have lawnmowers now that they say have zero turning radius, or something like that, whatever they call it, where you can just turn on a dime. A battleship, something that’s big and set in its ways, is going to take you 18 miles to swing around and turn that thing back around. He doesn’t promise this church at Laodicea a quick fix, because their problems were like that battleship.

It was going to take a lot of miles to turn them around. it was going to take a lot of dedication on their part to turn them around. But he still said, there’s hope here, there’s a chance for change.

He told them that they needed to buy the gold tried by fire, which we talked about this morning, find white raiment and clothe themselves, and they needed to put salve on their eyes to open them up from their blindness. And he tells them in verse 19, As many as I love, I rebuke and chase and be zealous therefore and repent. And that’s really the verse that I focused in on this morning, that he’s telling them, I’m telling you these things, and I’m warning you, and I’m getting on to you, and I’m chastening you because I love you, and I expect something better for you.

I know you’re capable of better. It used to, it used to drive me crazy, and I’m saying this with my parents here in the congregation tonight, it drove me crazy at times that when we were kids that my sister, and this is nothing I haven’t said to y’all before. My sister at report card time, they would come home, or we would come home, and she would get a C or something like that, and they’d be okay with it.

And I would get a B, and sometimes would get told, that’s not acceptable. You can do better. And you know what, they were right.

It wasn’t acceptable, but it drove me nuts. Why can she get C’s and I can’t get B’s? was because they knew we were capable of different things.

And that’s not to say that I don’t think I’m better than my sister. We just have different areas of strength. Come on.

I know you can do better. I expect better from you. When we would get in trouble sometimes, we would hear, that’s not how I raised you.

I expect better. It’s amazing how often I open my mouth and my dad comes out. I’ve told you this.

how did he throw his voice from 50 miles away I didn’t invite y’all here tonight because I had plans to talk about you that just kind of happened but I say those same things to my children that is not how you’re being raised I expect better from you if I didn’t think that they were capable of better I would say okay whatever do what you’re going to do but I’ve seen them some of y’all have referred to them as my angels. You’ve seen the good behavior. I’ve seen the good behavior too.

I know they’re capable of better. And so when they don’t live up to that, I say, you know, I’m going to get on to you. I’m going to put you in time out.

I’m going to spank you, whatever it is. And I’m doing that because I love you and I know you’re capable of better. You’ve got to learn this lesson.

So even though he comes to them with this harsh message, Jesus says, it’s because I love you and there’s something better here. And so he tells him, as many as I love, I rebuke and chase and be zealous therefore and repent. You need to get back on fire.

You need to change your mind. Not just change your behavior, but you need to change your mind about the direction you’ve been going, about the things that you’ve focused on. And you need to come back and agree with God that all those other things, all those other areas of focus, those are idols that are drawing your heart away from God.

And that’s sort of where we focused in this morning. But I want to look at verse 20, starting in verse 20. There’s three verses here tonight.

He says, Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to him and will sup with him and he with me. That is an important thing for him to say right on the heels of what he has just said to the church at Laodicea.

That is still part of the message to them. In my Bible, it gets cut off because there’s a heading that the publishers have put in between verses 19 and 20. But folks, it’s part of the same message.

If you remember the pattern that all of these messages have followed, he starts out by saying unto the angel of the church at so and so, write these things saith he, and then he describes himself in some way that matters to that church. And then he begins to talk to the church and says everything he needs to do and ends the message with, he that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches. Well, this falls in between unto the angel of the church at Laodicea, write, and he that hath an ear.

This is still part of the message to that really messed up church at Laodicea. So instead, again, instead of writing that church off and saying you’re hopeless, you’ll never amount to anything better, he says, I stand at the door and knock. Behold, hey, take notice.

I stand at the door. I’m out here knocking. And if any of you hear my voice, I realize you’re blind and deaf and you’re sitting in there and you’re focused on your wealth and your prosperity and your comfort and you can’t notice anything outside of yourself.

But hey, if any of you can hear me, I’m out here knocking. If any of you can hear me and you’ll open up the door, I will come in to him and I will sup with him and he with me. So even as far gone as this church was, he comes to them and he says, I’m out here still knocking.

I’m out here still trying to get your attention. And if any of you can hear, if any of you can hear, and you’ll open the door, I’ll come in. And I’ll sup with you.

Now this reminds me of the passage where it talks about people having their conscience seared with a hot iron. that sometimes we can get so far away from God that we really just don’t or we can put so many things in between us and God we really don’t hear Him anymore. We drown out His voice.

We don’t feel the pains of conscience when we sin. And I have burned my finger on an iron a number of times because, well, I’ve done dumb things. That iron is not getting the wrinkles out.

I wonder if it’s hot. And you know what? it was hot before it had that nice protective coating of skin on it.

Suddenly the iron’s not as hot anymore, but my fingers didn’t have a lot of feeling in them. And believe it or not, I’ve done that same thing a couple of times. And at one point I burned this finger so severely that for a few days I didn’t really have any feeling right here.

And then once I got feeling back, boy, oh boy, did I long for the days when I had no feeling in that finger. But you can press that against the iron so much that it singes the nerve endings. I don’t know what the technical term for it is, but your nerve endings just say, I don’t like that, and they retreat.

And you can’t feel anything anymore. In our conscience, we do the same thing with God. We sin and we ignore Him, and we sin and we ignore Him so much that it’s like searing our conscience with a hot iron.

There’s no feeling anymore there. And we can ignore God so much that we become deaf to his voice. Where we put so much stuff in between us, there’s not really a hearing sensation there anymore.

And so he says, if any of you in there can still hear me, I’m out here knocking. I’m out here trying to get your attention. And don’t take it as that being a picture of a weak God.

That he’s out there just begging and pleading and hoping that some of us will give him our attention. That is a strong and mighty God who could wipe us out and yet still stands there and says, I’m going to give you another chance. Not because I have to, not because I need you, but because I want to extend you this grace.

And he gave him another chance. And he stood out there and he knocked and said, if any of you will hear my voice, if any of you in there still can hear me, I’m knocking, open the door, and I’ll come in to him and sup with him and he with me. And that idea of sitting down and supping with someone, dining with someone, in their culture was one of the most intimate things that you could do.

You know, I realize it’s a little bit different for us today. I don’t know what things were like when you were growing up, but when I was in school we had cafeterias and we had long tables, and you sit where you’re assigned. And it didn’t matter whether you liked the people or not.

You were just going to have to eat with them. Well, I’m an adult now. I don’t have to eat with people I don’t want to eat with.

And there are people I just, nothing against them. We just rub each other the wrong way. I’d rather not sit down and have a meal with them.

But people that I, and by the way, that’s nobody in this room. So please don’t feel like I’m talking about you. But people that you like, you invite them to lunch or you invite them to dinner.

You sit down, you share a meal, and especially if it’s one of those that’s not a hurried meal, you sit down and you eat, and it takes you forever to eat because you’re talking. And then even after the meal is over, you sit there and you talk and you laugh and you swap stories. And that’s an intimate thing.

It was even more so in their culture. That’s why Jesus got in trouble from the religious leaders for sitting down and eating with the publicans. I almost said the Pharisees.

They were the ones who didn’t like it. He sat down and ate with the publicans and the sinners, the tax collectors. They didn’t like it because that was a sign of intimate friendship.

So what Jesus is telling the church at Laodicea, hey, all is not lost. If any of you in there still can hear me, it’s not too late. I’m still trying to get your attention. I’m still willing, if you’ll open the door, I’m still willing to come and have a relationship with you.

You’ve estranged yourself from God, but it doesn’t have to be that way because God is still there knocking and making the offer that I will come in and suck with him and he with me. To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne. Now I’ve said this with every message on these churches, that there’s this talk about to him that overcomes.

To him that overcomes.

And we hear overcome in our way of speaking, and we think somebody who overcame an obstacle, somebody who did something really good, they pressed on and they kept fighting and they kept going and because of what they did then they had a victory that’s not what overcoming means in this context is not what overcoming means in the scriptures I keep going back to first john 5 4 first john 5 4 where it says for whatsoever is born of god overcometh the world I didn’t have uh I didn’t have anything to do with being born of god now of course there was faith there there was faith there but I didn’t make myself be born of god I trusted christ and then he saved me he changed me I didn’t change myself into a new creation in christ he did that for whatsoever is born of god overcometh the world and this is the victory that overcometh the world here’s the key here even our faith even our faith who is he that overcometh the world says verse five but he that believeth that jesus is the son of god and folks we’re not just talking here about a mental agreement to the idea.

Most people you talk to, here in the Bible Belt, most people you talk to, saved or not, will say, well, yeah, I believe Jesus is the Son of God. That’s what they were taught. That’s just sort of part of our culture, maybe not as much as it used to be.

But most people will say, yeah, I believe Jesus is the Son of God. But when we’re talking here about faith, it’s not just a matter of, you know, that’s what I was taught. I believe it.

It’s a fact. He was the Son of God. Even the demons believe that.

Even they know that. When he’s talking about faith here. He’s talking about believing that Jesus is the Son of God who died on the cross as the sacrifice for our sins.

So how do we overcome the world? How do we get into this category of people who are overcomers that are then qualified for all these rewards that He offers? It’s faith.

It’s not that I was so good. It’s not that I pressed forward. It’s not that I fought harder.

I kept going. I overcame all these things. Folks, it’s faith in the one who overcame for us.

It’s believing that Jesus Christ died for my sins. It’s believing that I was a hopeless sinner who had nothing to offer God, and yet God made this offer of forgiveness solely because of what Jesus Christ did. And then taking hold of that offer that he makes, clinging to God’s mercy, asking God to forgive us because of what Jesus Christ did.

And then God changes us from the inside. God makes us born again. God makes us a new creation or creature.

That’s what happens when you try to say both those words at the same time. He makes us a new creation in Christ, a new creature. He makes us something altogether different.

And then not because we have been so good to overcome, but because he overcame for us. We are now overcomers. And to him that overcometh.

To him that’s part of this category, will I grant to sit with me in my throne? He grants it. It’s not something that he earned.

Sorry, let me, I said that wrong. It’s not something that we earned. It’s something that he earned.

When I went to college, when I went to college, I didn’t have to pay anything for it, thank goodness, or I probably would not have gone. I had scholarships from OU that took care of most of it, and yet I got grants from different organizations on top of it. And you know what?

I really, even if they say there’s an essay component, there’s this, there’s that, I didn’t earn those grants, and I didn’t have to pay those grants back, thankfully. I mean, that’s the difference between a grant and a loan. You know what?

For some of those, I might have written essays. I might have written this or that, but you know what? I’ve read my writing.

It’s not worth $5,000. I did not earn that grant. It was a gift.

It was a gift that somebody said, you know what here, I’m going to donate money so somebody can go to school. Folks, we did not earn that right. We didn’t earn the right to sit on his throne with him.

He granted us that right. To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne. Now I don’t know if he’s talking here about a literal throne that we all take that we all get to sit on or that’d be an awful big throne or that we all get to take turns sitting with him in throne or if he’s just talking symbolically here about ruling with him being there in heaven with him but the fact is he grants it to us to sit there with him in his throne even as I also overcame he overcame for us and I’m sat down with my father in his throne.

Folks, there are a couple invitations that he gives in this passage that are not only important for the church at Laodicea, but they’re important for us as well. There’s an invitation to hear him. There’s an invitation to listen.

Hey, listen to me. There’s a video on YouTube that Charla showed me a while back when we were both working at the school because some of the high school kids kept saying, Linda, listen, Linda, listen. I said, What in the world are they talking about?

And she showed me this video. There’s this little Hispanic boy who’s trying to get his mom’s attention, and he’s in trouble. And this kid could grow up to be a lawyer, I think, because he’s sitting there making the case for why he should not be punished for whatever he’s done.

And his mom keeps trying to ask him questions. He’s saying, listen, Linda, Linda, Linda, listen, Linda, listen. Cracks me up every time I watch it.

This goes on forever. You know what? Sometimes, believe it or not, I don’t always listen to what I’m hearing.

Ladies, that’s probably true with your husbands as well. I know that’s shocking. And Charla will look at me and say, listen, Linda, Linda, listen.

I have to stop. She’ll get my attention because she’s talking and I’m thinking I’m hearing what she’s saying and I’m nodding along, but it’s apparent from my reaction that I’m not hearing what she just said. Yesterday she was on the phone with me while she was at Walgreens.

And I heard the guy give her total. And I just lost it. How much did you buy there? And I’m going off on the phone.

And then we had one of those, Linda, listen. Linda, listen, because she’s trying to tell me what she bought. I thought he had said she spent $90.

97 and he said $20. 97. So that was a little better.

I thought, how much medicine did you buy? I was hearing things, but then I had quit listening. I had switched it off.

I had checked out. I heard what I thought I heard, and I went on with it. It didn’t matter what she was saying.

I heard what I. . .

And she had to get my attention and say, Hey, would you listen to me? You know what? As believers, I think sometimes we’re in that same boat with the Lord.

We know what we know, and we know what we think God is saying, and all the while God’s telling us something else, And he’s saying, hey, do you even hear me in there? He told the church at Laodicea, I stand outside and I’m knocking. And if any of you hear me, I don’t know how many times God has had to knock and get my attention and say, hey, are you even listening to me?

Do you hear me anymore? I try not to be this way, but it still happens. I try to be the guy who sits there and watches and gets all the information before I react or before I make a decision.

I try to be that guy. And yet sometimes I will hear something and I think I understand it and I’ve heard enough and there I go leaping to conclusion. And I’m off.

And it takes a while to rein me back in. And I can be that way with God as well. I only heard part of the message and I was off.

And meanwhile, God said, wait, wait, you need to make a U-turn. You’re miles down the road and you didn’t even hear what I said to you. So there’s an invitation to them and I think an invitation to us to, hey, I’m out here knocking.

Do you hear me? You’ve shut me out. You’re no longer listening to what I’ve said.

Just listen, Linda. There’s an invitation for us to hear him. There’s an invitation for us to listen to him.

There’s an invitation to a relationship with him. we are as children of God well that’s not the right way to say that if you’re a believer tonight you have a relationship with God you have a relationship with God the Father He is your Father and you are His child now we don’t start out that way we really we start out as the enemies of God and not because God made it that way but because we rebelled against God there’s a war of rebellion going on between man and God, and we fired the first shots in that war of rebellion. We start out as the enemies of God, but tonight, if you’re a believer, if you’ve trusted in Jesus Christ and his shed blood on the cross for your salvation, you have a relationship with God.

You’re his child, and he’s your father. But sometimes we don’t maintain the relationship like we ought to. Sometimes the relationship isn’t what it ought to be.

Sometimes we allow ourselves to grow distant. And when we feel distant from God, it’s not because he moved. I’ve probably given the example here, but I love this story of the older couple who’s in the truck and they used to sit right next to each other when they were young kids and they were dating.

And over time they’ve drifted to where now they sit in their I mean, they sit on the opposite sides of the truck, you know, like you normally would do. And the wife says, I just don’t feel like we’re as close as we used to be. And the husband says, well, I’m not the one who moved.

Folks, if we feel distant from God, he’s not the one who moved away. It was us. If that relationship doesn’t feel like it used to, it doesn’t mean we’re not his child anymore.

But we might have moved and put some distance between ourselves. How much of a relationship can you have if you don’t spend time together? I notice that there are people that I used to spend every day with, and we used to have a real close relationship, and now I’ll run into them somewhere, and I still love them, we’re still friends, we’re still good friends, but I notice now that it’s a year or two in between times that we see each other, and it may be weeks at a time that we go without talking, we don’t have as much to talk about.

And you probably noticed the same thing. That relationship is not quite the same as what it used to be. For there to be a relationship and for it to be everything it’s supposed to be, there’s got to be a spending of time, an investment of time, an intimacy there.

And he invites us to that. You know, God didn’t save us to keep us at arm’s length. He told the church at Laodicea, you’ve kept me at arm’s length, but I’m still here knocking, and if you’ll hear me and let me in, I’ll come sit down and I’ll have dinner with you.

And we’ll spend time together. Folks, I think we have the same offer from God. He says, hey, if you’ll hear me and you’ll let me in, I’m right here where I always have been.

And this relationship that is still here, it can be strengthened once again. There can be an intimacy with God. There’s an invitation from God here to come into His presence and to spend time with Him and get to know Him and develop the intimacy that we used to have.

And there’s an invitation here to spend eternity with Him. Now this is an invitation that we’ve already taken advantage of. If you’re a believer, you’ve already taken advantage of this invitation that He gives you.

But He promises us eternal life if we trust in Jesus Christ. We don’t get that eternal life by the good that we do. We don’t get that eternal life in heaven by going to church, by giving money to the right groups of people, or doing nice things, or taking care of animals, any of the things, you’d be amazed at some of the things that people say, well, I’m getting into heaven because of X, Y, and Z. I don’t think that’s right.

We have eternal life in heaven promised to us because of what Jesus Christ did if we just believe that he died for us and ask God to forgive us. We have that invitation to eternal life. We have that invitation to come and spend eternity with him.

And folks, that’s not something for us to, Okay, I took care of that 20 years ago, now I can forget it. 25 years ago I took care of that, now I can forget it. That’s an invitation that even though we’ve taken advantage of, or we’ve accepted the invitation, we haven’t taken full advantage because we’re not there yet.

It’s not something for us to ignore. It’s something for us to look forward to every day. It’s something for us to live our lives in light up.

You know, those days that I am most mindful of the fact that I will one day stand before my Father, Those are the days that I behaved the best. Those days that I realized that one day I’m going to stand before Him and give an answer. Not in the sense that He’s going to judge me for heaven or hell. That decision’s already been made.

Jesus Christ has already saved me out of hell. And yet I’m going to stand before Him and give an answer for what I’ve done. I’m going to give an account for the things that I’ve done.

The days that I really think about that, and the days that I really think about, I get to spend eternity with Him in heaven. It makes a difference. It makes a difference in the way I act.

It makes a difference not only in choosing between right and wrong, but also in where my focus lies. Hey, if I’m thinking that there’s eternity coming, and I get to spend it with my Father, and look at what all He’s done for me through Jesus Christ, it changes my focus, and it puts my focus where it belongs on serving Him, and on living for Him, and on cultivating that relationship with Him. Folks, there’s an invitation to eternity that we can’t afford to forget about.

And that invitation is also a reminder to us that no matter how bad things get here on earth, that this is only the dress rehearsal for what’s to come. It’s not, oh, forget about this life, it’s not important because there’s something better coming. This life is important in setting the stage for what comes next.

And we need to remember every day what He’s done for us and what He offers us. If we’re born again people, if we’re born again people who are going to spend eternity with Him, who have a hope, honestly, that this world doesn’t have, shouldn’t we live like it? Shouldn’t it change how we act?

Shouldn’t it change how we talk, how we live? And I’m not saying, I don’t mean this necessarily even, oh, you’re all out living horrible lives and you’re. .

. Probably not. I mean, I know we all have sin in our lives, but odds are everybody in here is probably not out living a double life.

I’m just talking in terms of the focus that we have. If we’re focused on eternity and what He’s done for us, it should change every day of our lives. It should change our priorities.

It should change. . .

People should be able to see the hope and the joy that’s within us. And this message to the church at Laodicea is that it doesn’t matter how messed up things have gotten. That there’s always, there’s an opportunity, there’s an invitation to come back to Him.

There’s an invitation to focus on Him again. There’s an invitation to set things at right. As long as there’s life and God continues calling us by His Holy Spirit, there’s hope to turn things around.

for a wayward church and for wayward people. And in my case, and probably some of your cases as well, for sometimes wayward people who have to be reminded from day to day and from hour to hour that there’s a certain set of priorities and a certain behavior that comes with belonging to Him.

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