BEHOLD! Week 1: Revelation 3:20 Total Attention Leads to Total Transformation

Sir George Still was a British pediatrician who practiced in the early 1900s.

Dr.

Still's contributions to medicine are many.

He um authored five medical textbooks, wrote hundreds of articles, and he even identified a cardiac condition that to this day continues to bear his name.

It's called Still's Murmur.

But for some parents in the room, and I would beg to guess every single teacher in the room, Sir George Still has an even greater contribution.

Something that you deal with on an everyday basis.

Sir George Still was the first medical professional to identify and classify ADD.

You know what those three letters stand for, don't you?

Attention deficit disorder.

In simplest terms, ADD describes children and adults who simply are unable to focus.

As a result, they struggle following directions.

They're often thought to be simply daydreaming their way through life, and they are always, always, always, always, always forgetting something.

According to the most recent studies, 10% of children ages 2 to 17 have been diagnosed with ADD and its first cousin, ADHD.

The H stands for hyperactive, so not only can you not pay attention and follow directions or focus, you are bouncing off the walls as you do it.

However, listen, ADD is more than a medical diagnosis.

It's a cultural diagnosis.

Did you know that 64%, so two-thirds of car wrecks are the result of inattentive, distracted drivers?

Or that the average student can focus on a given task for only two minutes.

Or that the average internet user, their attention for a screen is only 40 seconds.

Or that the average 25 to 34-year-old will check their smartphone 50 times throughout the course of the day.

Or that it takes the average employee, if they're interrupted just one time, it takes them 25 minutes to regain their focus and attention and get along, get on with the task they were already in the middle of.

In the United States in 2021, ADD is more than a medical diagnosis, it is a cultural diagnosis.

Now, one of the greatest causes of that ADD is the digital sandbox that we call social media.

Facebook and Twitter and TikTok and Instagram.

We scroll social media reading tweet after tweet or our newsfeed or glancing at pictures on Instagram or watching videos on TikTok.

Another cause of our attention deficit disorder within our culture is the endless and frenetic cable news cycle.

Researchers, they've actually determined that the combination of social media and cable news has actually exhausted our ability to pay attention.

Those two sources, they just overwhelm us with more information than we can possibly ever comprehend, that we could possibly ever do anything about or understand, and we just are give out because of it.

Now, cultural ADD, of course, has some societal consequences.

Because we're unable to pay attention, well, not as many people read books anymore.

Because we struggle with our attention, we find it more difficult to have face-to-face conversations with people.

We struggle to listen to them, especially if we disagree with them.

But there are not just societal consequences for ADD.

There are spiritual consequences.

Listen to this wisdom by the author John Ortberg.

He says it this way.

He says, For many of us, the greatest danger is not that we will renounce our faith, it is that we will become so distracted and rushed and preoccupied that we will settle for a mediocre version of it.

In other words, if you are a follower of Jesus, one of the consequences of cultural ADD is that the faith you possess is far less than the abundant life that Jesus promises to all those who put their faith in him and follow him on a daily basis.

Your faith could be a five-star, five-course meal.

But instead, you settle for driving through the drive-thru every single day to get the$5-piece grab bag from Wendy's.

That's a mediocre faith.

We settle for something far less.

A mediocre faith is a faith that knows all the right lingo and all the right language.

But the words that are spoken, they lack force or power.

A mediocre faith, it's a faith that neither impacts your life nor does it impact the life of anybody else.

A mediocre faith, it's a faith that in the words of 1 Peter chapter 1, verse 14, lazily slips back into those old grooves of evil, doing just what you feel like doing.

1 Peter 1:14

You see, a mediocre faith, that's the faith that lies on the ground and struggles to breathe.

It's gasping for air.

And a mediocre faith is our lot.

Because we have failed to identify and to address the consequences of our cultural ADD.

You know, for 21 days during the month of January, what did we pray for as a church?

We prayed for renewal and revival and awakening.

And our commitment at the end of those 21 days was to continue praying.

To pray for another 21 days, to pray for another 21 weeks, to pray for another 21 months or 21 years, to pray until for those things for renewal and revival and awakening until the very day that Jesus would return.

And it's my estimation that our biggest obstacle towards seeing renewal and revival and awakening break out.

Our biggest obstacle to staying the course is that we don't want to identify nor address the consequences of our own attention deficit disorder.

We want to live and believe that our perpetual state of distraction has no impact on our relationship with God.

During those 21 days and immediately after, we were dreaming of possessing a miraculous faith.

We are at a mountaintop moment.

But it doesn't take long to come crashing back to earth.

And once again, what do we settle for?

We settle for mediocrity.

And I'm tired of mediocrity.

I don't like to eat mediocre food.

Ask Lauren.

I don't enjoy cheering for mediocre sports teams.

Go hogs.

And I sure don't like mediocre faith.

But there is a cure.

There's a cure for this mediocre faith.

Listen to the words of King David in Psalm 27, verse 4.

Psalms 27:4

David says this: he says, One thing I have desired of the Lord, that will I seek, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.

To behold the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple.

At that particular moment in David's life, listen, at that particular moment in his life, he does not suffer from a deficit of attention.

Instead, David enjoys an abundance of attention.

At this moment in David's life, there is only one thing on his mind.

He's not going to let his mind wander in less than two minutes.

He's not going to check the notifications or reply to the text message on his phone.

He's not going to scroll through his newsfeed.

He's not going to turn on the TV.

He's not going to read the newspaper.

Because there's nothing that will distract David in that moment from that one thing.

And that one thing is this to behold the beauty of the Lord.

And that short yet profound statement is our remedy that begins to address the spiritual consequences of our own attention deficit disorder.

You and I, we must become people who what?

Behold the beauty of the Lord.

So today we're beginning this new series, and as Dustin mentioned at the welcome time, this series centers around that single word, behold.

In older English translations of the Bible, behold, you found it on almost every single page.

In the King James Version, behold appears 1,300 times.

Modern translations use that word with less frequency, yet the power of that word, behold, remains.

A theologian named Maggie Ross proposes this: that she believes that you could argue the case that behold is the single most important word in all of Scripture.

Because behold is this word that interrupts the flow of scripture.

It grabs our attention.

It says, pay attention right now.

And that's exactly what David does in Psalm 27.

He pays attention to God's beauty.

God's beauty, that's God's personality, God's person, his traits, his characteristics, his attributes, his works.

And as David pays attention to God's beauty.

As he beholds God's beauty, he suddenly realizes that God's beauty is not just somewhere up there, God's beauty is all around him.

In that same psalm, he describes how God provides his stronghold.

That stronghold is an expression of the beauty of God.

Behold, David says, behold the beauty of the Lord.

But when it comes to beholding, attention is only half of the equation.

There's also transformation.

In other words, pay attention to God so that God can take hold of you.

Behold the beauty of God, so that the hand of God can envelop you and take hold of you and own you and pick you up and transform your life.

Listen to what the Apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians chapter 3, verse 18.

2 Corinthians 3:18

He says, But we all with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror, the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.

So together, Psalm 27 verse 4, and 2 Corinthians 3, verse 18, together that helps us have this working definition of what it means to behold throughout the course of this series.

Psalms 27:4 2 Corinthians 3:18

And here it is.

It is a miraculous faith.

Because it is a faith that has been taken hold of by the glory of Jesus Christ, and now this faith displays the glory of Jesus Christ in the world.

But for far too long, we have failed to identify and to address the spiritual consequences of our own attention deficit disorder.

So out the course of the next about eight weeks, you and I have to take seriously the invitation of David to behold the beauty of the Lord.

That is our one antidote, our one remedy for this problem that we all face.

So when's the last time you beheld the beauty of God?

When's the last time you gave God total attention and began to experience the first fruits of total transformation in your life?

It could be that you're not quite sure how to answer that question.

You can't remember it.

It's been too long ago.

And that's okay.

Because today, today I we can hear a sound together, and that sound is this.

It's the knock at the door.

And the one who is at the door, he's just waiting for you to answer.

Listen to these words found in Revelation chapter 3.

Revelation 3 · chapter mention

Beginning in verse 14, it says, And to the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write, These things says the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God, I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot.

I could wish you were cold or hot, so then, because you are lukewarm, neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of my mouth, because you say I am rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing, and do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked.

I counsel you to buy for me gold refined in the fire, that you may be rich in white garments, that you may be clothed, that the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed, and anoint your eyes with eyesolve that you may see.

As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten.

Therefore be zealous and repent.

Behold, I stand at the door and knock.

If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him and he with me.

In the verses I just read for you, Jesus confronts the congregation of Laodicea with the spiritual consequences of their own attention deficit disorder.

The church at Laodicea, they fail to behold the beauty of the Lord because they are so distracted by all of the wealth that they possess.

The ancient city of Laodicea, it was one part Wall Street, one part Silicon Valley.

Laodicea was a banking hub, a financial market was there, but it also was the place of science and medicine, of experimentation and development.

And that meant that immense wealth flowed through the economy of Laodicea.

The economy of Laodicea, listen, it was always going boom.

It never went bust.

Things were going well, people were taken care of.

And the church at Laodicea, they were just like the citizens of Laodicea.

They did not believe they had any sort of needs.

I am in need of nothing.

They thought they had it all together.

But what does Jesus speak to that church?

He says, You think you have it all, but you in fact have nothing at all.

You have lost sight of the condition of your soul because you are so consumed with the wealth that you possess.

At best, listen, at best, the faith of that church is mediocre.

But it's probably more accurately described as miserable.

Because it's a faith that serves absolutely no purpose in the world.

That's why Jesus says, you're neither hot nor cold.

Laodicea didn't have its own water supply.

Alright?

And so they depended on other places to get their water.

And so a hot water would serve some purposes, cold waters would have other purpose, but lukewarm water, like no purpose at all.

And Jesus said, You're like that lukewarm water that we know has no purpose.

You don't want lukewarm water.

I don't want lukewarm water, and I want to just spit it out of my mouth.

When it comes to cultural ADD, it's not just then that we suffer from a deficit of attention.

It's the fact that what little attention that we do have, we offer it to all the wrong things.

If we're being honest, maybe we would be willing to admit that we've got a family pew at the Church of Laodicea.

There's even a plaque on the pew, and it bears our family name.

Because we too are far too easily distracted.

What little attention we have, we give it to the wealth that we already possess.

And we fail to behold the beauty of the Lord.

Think of it this way, um, just real practically, when it comes to beholding the beauty of the Lord.

Um this morning, as you got your family up and you got ready for church to come, did you spend more time staring at all the beautiful clothes in your closet, imagining what you may wear, than you did in preparing your heart to behold the beauty of the Lord?

Scripture says that the Lord reigns, he is clothed with majesty.

The Lord has clothed and girded himself with strength.

Or do you spend more time uh planning home improvements and the beautification of your home than you do sitting in silence beholding the beauty of the Lord?

How lovely is your tabernacle, O Lord of hosts.

Now, do you spend uh more time uh thinking about that date with that beautiful guy or gal than beholding the beauty of the Lord?

Do you spend more time trying to make the Almighty dollar?

Then beholding the beauty of the Almighty God.

He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide in the shadow of the Almighty.

You see, it's not always the case that we don't have attention.

Our reservoir may be low on attention, but it's there.

We just give it to all of the wrong sorts of things.

We replace our desire for beautiful things.

Everybody likes pretty things.

Everybody enjoys beautiful things.

But we were replace and we we feed that desire for the beauty of God and we replace it with the beauty of the things of this world.

The things we can possess.

The beauty that's in our closet, the beauty we see in someone we want to take out on a date, the beauty of our home.

And the thing that happens in our lives when we replace our desire and that God created us for Him and not for these things when we replace those things of creation and put them in the place of creator.

Man, the spiritual consequences that we reap, they will wreck our lives.

They've already wrecked some of our lives.

We will be self-centered and selfish.

We will be greedy and even godless.

You see, when we behold the things of the world, we will become just like the people of the world.

But listen, to people who have this attention deficit disorder, or what little attention that we possess, we we uh we give it to all the wrong sorts of things.

Do you hear the sound?

Do you hear the behold?

I stand at the door and knock.

That's our word for the series, behold.

And with that word, what Jesus does is he interrupts the life of the church at Laodicea, and he interrupts the life of this church in El Dorado.

With that word, behold, I stand at the door and knock.

Jesus says, pay attention, pay attention, I'm here.

I want to take hold of your life, I want to transform your life.

I want your mediocre faith to become a miraculous faith.

I'm knocking.

Will you answer?

You know, in the afternoons when I get home from work, two or three days a week, I'll come in and the kids are there and uh I'll hear a knock at the door.

It'll be one of the neighborhood kids wanting to know if um the kids want to come out and play.

You know what I never do?

I never invite the neighborhood kids to come inside.

I never like with an up, I'm never like, come on in, guys.

No, I'm like, you stay here.

And I either say, well, she can't play, Evelyn can't play, she's got activities or she's doing homework, or I'm like, y'all go play, get outside.

Like, you're not coming in here, you're staying out there.

Or other afternoons, that's the and it's the FedEx guy.

I'm gonna sign for the package and bring it inside.

But you know what?

Never invite the FedEx guy inside.

Or it'd be like a Saturday afternoon when that knock occurs, and it's the uh it's the security system salesman going door to door, and I don't even open the door when he comes.

I just act like nobody's here.

I'll go turn off the lights and pull the curtains.

But if you hear the and it's a family member or it's a friend, you go to the door and you open it, and you invite them to come inside.

So here's the question: how will you answer the knock of Jesus?

Will you treat him like the neighborhood kid or the security system salesman or the FedEx guy keeping him at a distance, keeping him on the porch?

Will you even open the door for him at all?

Or will you treat Jesus as if he is your family member, your friend who you couldn't wait to see and have them come over and you're ready to spend time with them?

You want to invite them in and give them your full and undivided attention.

And to all of those who answer the door and invite Jesus to come in, do you know what the first thing Jesus does?

He finds your dining room table, he finds an empty chair, and he just like plops down.

He's like, let's talk.

And the conversation goes on for so long that you end up sharing a meal with one another.

And that image of the table, what it does is it reminds us that Jesus desires an intimate relationship with all who follow him around the table.

Listen, our mediocre faith can become a miraculous faith because we see the true beauty of Jesus Christ.

We begin to understand who he truly is.

Like Jesus, he comes into our home and he doesn't say, Well, what have you cooked me for dinner?

He'll just like he eats what we serve him.

He's not curious if the laundry's out, he's not curious if the floors have been mopped or if the dog isn't smelly, he's not curious about any of those things.

He just wants to be with you.

And we see that, and we're confronted with the love of Jesus and the mercy of Jesus and the grace of Jesus that whatever mess we've made of our life, he's still there.

Behold, I stand at the door and knock.

And maybe that image of the table, what it also does is it reminds us that we can catch a glimpse of the beauty of the Lord in the most very most basic moments of our life.

Certainly we catch a glimpse of the beauty of God when we gather for corporate worship.

But we can also catch a glimpse of the beauty of God when we wash dishes and do laundry.

We catch a glimpse of the beauty of Jesus when we reminded that Jesus is a servant unlike any other.

He does very menial tasks.

He didn't cling to his sonship, he came as a slave, as a servant.

We can behold the beauty of God when we walk through creation and we just see that everything, I can see with my eyes, there's a God who made it, who spoke it into existence.

We can catch a glimpse of the beauty of the Lord when we go to school or go to work because we can do those things as unto the Lord.

Listen, we have lived with our own attention deficit disorder, and we failed to identify its spiritual consequences and to address them for far too long.

Friends, it's time that we do what?

We behold the beauty of the Lord.

A total attention that will yield a total transformation.

Let's pray together.

And what I want to invite you to do right now, just say these words, say, show us your beauty.

Ask God to reveal Himself.

Show us your beauty, God.

Show us who you are.

Can you locate the condition of your own soul between mediocrity and miraculous?

Where are you?

And now confess those habits of your life that promote a distracted life.

And now you confess, hear the knock at the door.

Open the door.

Invite Jesus in.

Almighty God and everlasting Father.

You are beautiful beyond comprehension.

Yet we all too often substitute the beautiful things of this world for the beauty that we see in your throne room, that we see displayed through the cross and resurrection of Jesus.

Forgive us.

We know that only your beauty can transform us.

Those things that we replace it with, Lord, they disappoint us, they leave us lonely, they isolate us, they disappoint us, they frustrate us.

They leave us longing, God, but you satisfy.

Let us truly see who you are.

Take hold of us, God, transform us.

In Christ's name we pray.

Amen.