Hot? Cold? Who knows? with Ben Carruthers

Well, yeah, good morning.

My name is Ben Carothers, I'm the director of Student and Family Ministry here and it's great to be with you as we are coming close to wrapping up our sermon series on the you Pick series.

So this is a really cool series where you guys over the past few months have emailed in questions, some very difficult questions, a lot of them very difficult questions, and then we do our best to answer them, and next week is our last week and Pastor Ryan's going to talk about baptism next week and then we move into our fall series on discipleship.

But this question came from this passage.

At least I think it's from this passage.

The question was what does it mean to be lukewarm?

What does it mean to be lukewarm?

But it went even further than that.

This question is something that really perplexed this individual.

It was an anonymous question brought in, but I think it's one that we deal with and struggle with as a whole as Christians.

It said what does it mean to be lukewarm?

And then it went on to say I am so paralyzed by fear that I am lukewarm that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

See this passage where Jesus is talking to this church in Laodicea and he's saying hey, I wish you were either hot or cold, but don't be lukewarm.

And I think we interpret that as being I wish you were on fire for the gospel, right, be on fire for Jesus, I'd like to see you that.

Or I'd like to see you cold, which I think we interpret means no faith at all, or distance.

He'd rather see us like that than be lukewarm in our faith.

And there's this fear that comes along when we interpret the scripture that way.

That says man am I doing enough?

Is my faith strong enough?

And so the fear that this individual is experiencing I think we all may experience in some way or another.

And so, to dive into this a little bit, we have to go on and go back to a sermon series we did a few months ago called Story, context, symbol, because the context here is everything to this passage and it dramatically changes what it means to the church of Laodicea when it was written and the church today.

For us, context, context, context, it's everything.

And one of my classes at seminary, one of my professors, told me context is everything and it's key and it's difficult, right?

So I've been working in youth ministry for 15 years.

I have four kids and over those years, I have yet to figure out the words that youth use to communicate with one another.

It's the most confusing thing, the slang they use, and it's constantly changing, right?

So I have a few of those that I wanna share with you.

So the first one is this one slay.

Now just raise your hand.

I'm not gonna call on you, but raise your hand if you think you know what slay might mean.

Okay, a few more hands in the last one, very good.

So slay again.

I'm gonna tell you what I think it means and I'm probably getting it wrong, but slay means, like you know, you're killing it, right.

Like you're doing an awesome job.

You're slaying it right?

Not my word.

Next word is this drip.

How many, yeah, how many, of you guys think you know what drip means?

Like the slang version, not like your faucet, and you gotta call it plumber, right?

So drip means like.

Again, forgive me if I get this wrong, but like you look good, right?

Like you're drippy, right, I think.

Is that what it means?

Like you're drippy.

You guys are laughing way more at me than the other people did.

I think that's what it is right Like you're drippy, which I think is weird.

I think if someone said, hey man, you look really nice today, I think that's great.

So I'll say, hey, man, you're drippy.

I'd be like thinking I'd be like running from some spot or something which, for me, it's probably both actually Like.

I probably am drippin' all over the place.

How about this one?

This is the most confusing one yeet, yeet.

If you were to poll the students in this room are in Pathfinders what yeet mean?

You will get 10 to 12 different answers.

This word is made up and there's no rule.

However, they did have a discussion.

A great panel of great minds met after the last service and we decided that the real death, it doesn't mean to throw something Like yeet, something.

Okay, there you have it Now.

I will be honest with you.

When I told my kids about these words, they're like dad, no one says those anymore Like they're already onto a whole new set.

So we didn't get education.

My favorite, though, is two years ago, on our Florida trip, I found out what this meant 0.5.

Does anyone know what 0.5 means?

Okay, first of all, this is not how you write it.

Okay, I learned that as well.

I sent all my notes to Olivia and she's like what is 0.5?

And I said oh, it's this thing on the camera that we talk about.

It's a way that you can take it.

She's like it's not written like this, it's written like this.

So right away it shows what I'm talking about.

But a 0.5 is like this cool selfie thing you can take that looks kinda like you're in a fishbowl, looks like this.

So this is a 0.5 picture taken of a staff in young life.

They brought us lunch one day last week, very kind, and so that's what a 0.5 is.

Now my friend, addison Braley, showed me how you can take a really cool 0.5 selfie that really makes you look stunning, okay, and it looks something like this.

There you have it.

I sent that photo to my wife and I said you are lucky, lady, right, very fortunate.

I've been working with you for 15 years and I have yet to figure out their language and what's going on.

And that's important.

The context of these conversations are important.

Otherwise we have no idea what they're talking about.

If you go up to a kid on the street and he says, hey, you look drippy or you got dread for whatever it is, you might be offended, when really it's a compliment.

The same is true with this passage.

We have to understand the context of what Jesus is saying here to a specific church at a specific time and how that relates to us Central in 2023.

How does that relate?

But the context of what's going on is gonna dramatically change the way that you view this passage, and our hope and prayer this morning is that not only it changes the way you think about it, but, man, if you're like this person in dealing with this cycle of fear when it comes to our, is your faith strong enough?

Are you doing enough to earn something from God?

And you're in this cycle of fear?

Our hope and prayer is, as we dive into this and maybe what Jesus was really meaning, that you can be free of that, so being that's our prayer.

Will you pray with me this morning?

Hell you follow, look out.

We give you thanks and praise for this morning opportunity to dive into this passage and a passage that maybe has caused fear for many.

Maybe not this passage, but just this general idea of our faith.

Is our faith strong enough?

Are we earning what we need to earn to be with you for our salvation or to be with you someday?

Lord, we struggle with this and so, lord, let this truth speak freely today and let the truth of your words set freedom for many as well.

It's in your name that we pray amen.

So, context, context.

If you got your Bible you can open to Revelation, chapter 3 and verse 16, where he is speaking.

Revelation 3 · chapter mention

So Jesus is giving John right, john has this revelation and he's speaking to John at this point in Revelation to these specific seven churches and in this chapter, specifically speaking to the church in Laodicea.

So it's important for us to understand what is this church all about, what was going on during the time, the context, the context, the context.

So I have a little map for you.

Laodicea is somewhere in kind of current day Turkey and it was located kind of right off that river there.

A few things about the church one, the church and the city.

I should say the city was incredibly wealthy.

It kind of rested on a trade route.

So it was set up, was almost a banking industry set up at this city, very, very wealthy, very, very self contained and didn't need help from anybody.

That's all kind of how that city lived.

A matter of fact, there was an earthquake in 60 AD that completely annihilated the city, broke it down to its core, and normally at that time they would go to Rome and be like Rome.

We need a massive loan to rebuild our city.

Well, laodicea took a lot of pride in the fact that they didn't take a dime from Rome.

They rebuilt their city their own, paying their own way through it.

A very self, sufficient, self contained community, and that piece of information is going to be very helpful for us a little bit later, right?

So Jesus, speaking to this city particularly, and he says man, I wish you were either hot or cold, and not lukewarm, because I spit lukewarm water out of my mouth.

Right, if he's not talking about faith here, if he's not talking about the level of faith that you have, what does this mean?

Well, this means something very specific to the people of this city, very specific, and it's something that they live with every day.

So you see two cities on the map there oh, you can go back, sorry.

So you see Heropilus and Coloss.

There, see, even though Laodicea was next to a river, their water supply was bad, and so we have discovered not we, I wasn't there personally, but people have discovered aqueduct systems leading from Heropilus and Coloss, and that is where the city would get their water.

Something interesting about these cities.

Heropilus, to the north, was known for its cold springs, its ice, cold, natural water, beautiful drinking water, and they would pipe that water down to Laodicea.

But the problem was that by the time this nice, fresh, cold water traveled down to Laodicea, it was lukewarm, no longer good to drink, no longer refreshing to drink.

The second place they got water was from Coloss, and Coloss was known for their hot springs, beautiful hot water, healing water, and so Laodicea piped water in from there, but by the time it got to the city it was what lukewarm.

The water in this city was lukewarm.

When Jesus refers to being spit out of their mouth, they know what that would mean.

They'd go to the faucet, get a nice cup of lukewarm water, and this is disgusting.

They would understand this imagery.

So if this imagery means something, then what does it mean?

Hot and cold water.

You see, cold water that's my gurgle pot.

You like that?

That's cool, right?

Cold water is useful.

Cold water is refreshing to drink.

It's refreshing to dive into on a hot day.

If you're a youth director who has a problem with sweating, it's beautiful to tell you off here.

Cold water is useful.

Hot water is useful On the way in today, or maybe at home, maybe you poured yourself a nice cup of hot coffee, maybe a tea, maybe a two-pump, low-fat, low-carb whatever it is you drink, right, it's useful for our beverages.

Hot water is useful for medicine.

Hot water is useful.

Cold water and hot water are useful.

Lukewarm water is not that useful.

You see, jesus is saying to this city which they would have understand the idea of hot water and the importance of hot water, because they don't have a lot of it, the importance of cold water, the refreshing nature of cold water, because they don't have a lot of it.

They understand what Lukewarm water is and Lukewarm water is not useful.

Hot and cold water are useful.

So here Jesus is not telling the church of Laodicea that man, I would rather you be on fire in your faith, or extremely cold and distant than Lukewarm, than medium faith.

Stop there for a second.

How crazy is that?

That we interpret it this way, that we think that Jesus would say I wish you had no faith at all than a little bit of a faith.

But we do Not only do we teach that.

Oh, man, the person who wrote this question is probably a former student of mine, because I can remember, I kid you not, I can remember standing up in front of a youth group preaching on this topic and telling them how important it is for them to be on fire for Jesus, otherwise we spill out and I'm like, oh my gosh, the damage that I have done for these poor students.

But we interpret that way.

Jesus never says anything about having this middle ground.

Faith.

That's not good, no matter what you say.

He says faith the size of a what A mustard seed Move mountains.

But we've interpreted this verse to mean either be on fire or not at all, but don't be lukewarm.

We have instilled this fear in ourselves that faith is about leveling up.

When I was younger and still to this day a little bit I love video games, right.

And when I was younger I played Mario Contra, all the Street Fighter games, and the goal of that was to get through the level, to defeat the bad guy, and then to what?

Go on to the next level, right.

And you do this by collecting more different kind of weapons or different kinds of health, and you have to do all of these different things in order to beat the bad guy and then you go to the next level.

You have to do all these different things.

We have turned our faith into a leveling up system when we feel that we have to do these certain things to be on fire in our faith in order to earn the next level of faith and then, when we're there, that's not good enough.

We have to do other things to earn and earn and earn and hopefully do enough things to earn our salvation, to be with God.

And we've taken passages like this to enforce that idea, which just breeds fear and worry and uncertainty and untruth.

Faith is not a level up system.

Faith is not trying to do enough good works to earn your way to the next level, to the next level.

Faith is not a level up system.

Faith is this beautiful journey and you probably heard this being told a lot, that faith is a journey.

But it couldn't be more true.

Faith is this journey and the journey is all about understanding the heart of God.

It's a never ending journey and this journey is filled of ups and downs and confusions and hurts and pains and joys and celebrations, but the whole time you are walking with God, not walking towards God, and that's a big difference.

Faith is this journey to understanding the heart of God because it's a relationship.

I have four kids.

You guys probably know that because I talk about them all the time.

Isaiah is my oldest.

Maya, arlo, who read.

And little Ezzy right, a little firecracker Ezzy.

And nothing beats being a dad man.

It's my all time favorite thing in life.

But with these four individuals I am on four different journeys because each one of them are different.

My oldest, isaiah, he's really smart and he's just a black and white kind of guy right or wrong kind of guy Right, and I was kind of like that at one point in my life too, and so we relate to that.

But there's times where me and him man we see eye to eye and life is great and he's a good kid.

There are other times where we clash and it's a little bit rough.

But I'm on this journey with him and it looks different.

Maya, my daughter, she has the biggest heart out of anybody I know.

Right, we went through communion and there was a little at the last service there was a little baby within a cast.

Did you see that, right?

I'm like my daughter Maya would lose it, right, she'd be crying and she had the biggest heart.

She just couldn't handle seeing that.

And so I have to go on this journey with this girl who has so much compassion and empathy, which are two of my non-strengths, as I call them right, and so I'm learning from her as much as she is learning from me.

But my journey with her is different.

My son, arlo.

We're a lot alike, we're really competitive, and he plays all the sports and does all the things and he thinks he's the best at everything.

Right?

So I have to come alongside him and be like man, calm down a little bit, right?

We're on this journey together and as he's this firecracker, he's five years old.

I have no idea what he's going to turn out to be or what he's going to create, what he's going to do, but I'm on this journey with him.

There's a couple hundred of us in this room and your journey looks like no one else's journey Because it's your journey with God and as you go through the high points and those moments where you feel on fire in faith, praise God, man.

But there's a lot of those dark moments on the journey where you don't understand what's going on, where, if I'm walking with God, if this is truly a journey and we're walking together, why is this happening?

Why do these bad things happen?

If this is truly it doesn't feel that way, man.

Those are rough points in your faith journey, but it's a journey, because even those moments, those moments of hurt and confusion, are moments where we can come to know the heart of God, because faith is not a level up system.

Faith is a journey with God to understand his heart.

Know with my kids.

The coolest thing is that, even though they are very different and even though one day our relationship might be just top notch on fire hot, whatever you might call it there are also moments where it's not so great.

There are moments where they make mistakes, there are a lot more where I make mistakes, but at the end of the night, when we all go to sleep and we lay our heads on our pillows, whatever happened during the day, the actions that happened, the things that were done, doesn't change the fact that I'm their father and they are my kids and that I love them and will always love them, not because of the things they did that day, but because of who they are.

That's the same with us, right?

It doesn't matter what we do during the day, the ups and the downs, when we go to bed at night.

God is our Father and he loves us for who you are a son or a daughter not for the things that you did not, for the things that we try to do to earn our, his love, earn his grace, earn his mercy, earn his salvation.

Those are gifts given to us, not because of what we have done, but because of who we are.

And it's an incredible, amazing gift given freely to us, not based on our level of faith.

And something must have been going on here in the church of Laodicea.

And when we read that passage it talks a little bit about pride, it talks a little bit about wealth.

And it seems to me and I could be wrong it seems to me that this town seems to kind of live in its own bubble right, and kind of close the world off around them and lived in their bubble.

They were wealthy, they were well off, they were able to rebuild and they liked that situation.

And Jesus wasn't talking about their level of faith, whether they'd be hot or cold, but what they were saying is listen, you live inside of this bubble and the world around you needs, you needs the message of the gospel.

Be useful, live outside those walls and be used for God's glory.

And here's the thing we do that again, not because we level up.

We don't leave here thinking I gotta go to the soup kitchen, I gotta do this, I gotta do this because I wanna level up.

We do these things in response to what God has done for us.

We respond to God's amazing gift of salvation and grace and love and compassion given to us.

We respond by saying, yes, I wanna be useful.

What a great honor it is to do that, to be able to leave this place and understand the knowledge of the amazing gift that we have.

And now we get to go out and be useful for the kingdom of God.

That's what this passage is talking about.

This passage wants to destroy the idea of level up faith and wants to encourage you in who you are, the gift that you have been given and, in response to that, go out and be the love of Christ to other people.

And what does that look like?

What does it look like then, to respond to that?

And the beauty piece of this is that it depends on who you are right.

It's your journey with God.

He may be asking you to respond in a different kind of way, but one thing is for certain we are all on a different journey together, seeking the heart of God, which means that someone in this room or out there is having a real hard time If their faith is suffering and they feel like they can't go on.

Too much bad stuff's happening, too much hurt, too much pain.

Our response to what God has done for us is to go and seek out that person and be the faith that they need for that moment in time, for that piece of their journey.

That's real hard.

Our response to the gift of God is to go and be the faith that that person needs.

And that's going to look different for every single one of us, but what an honor and a privilege it is to be able to respond to God's love and be useful in that kind of way.

I'm going to close with this quick story.

So Arlo, he's been playing flag football for a few years now and he just started playing tackle this past month.

He just started and nothing is cuter than watching second graders gear up.

They look a bunch of bobbleheads slobbing out there.

Man and I didn't know how he was going to do right, like he's played flag football and he's loved it.

And he geared up, put the helmet on, put the pads on and the first full contact practice came and you could see him be a little timid and a little uneasy, which is crazy for Arlo If you know his personality man, that's not him.

He's all in all the time.

And I saw this little bit of fear in him, this little bit of fear of like I don't know if I want to do this.

This could hurt, getting hit could hurt.

I don't know if I want to do this.

And the practice went on and finally, man, he went on and popped somebody right.

This little two-year-old body went on and popped somebody Next play.

He got popped by somebody right and now I'm like this is it?

This is going to decide where this kid's going to continue playing flag football or, like, take up a different hobby, right.

And he got up and he came back and he's like I loved it, which I didn't know if I liked to look in his eye when he said it right, A little too aggressive, and he put his helmet back on there and he went out there and he was a wild man, man.

He was tackling people left and right.

He was tackling his own wide receiver.

I'm like, don't tackle him, he's a good guy, don't do that.

But he just went out there.

Why?

Because he was fearless.

He no longer lived with the fear of is it going to hurt?

Was it going to feel like he knew, he understood, and he was fearless.

He was able to go and do his job, and not only that, but enjoy it.

Central, the key to this, is that when we understand the promises of God, that salvation is not a level up system, that it's a gift that's been already given to you freely and you live with that, you become fearless for the gospel.

You become fearless because it's no longer about you and about your salvation.

That has been done through the blood of Christ.

It's already been paid for.

While we were still sinners, christ saved us.

When we can live with that mentality, you become fearless.

It's no longer worrying about us, but it's this feeling of man we get to be useful for the kingdom of God.

So, central Lutheran church, let us live without fear and be reckless for the love and kingdom of God.

Amen.