Just Like Him

If you have your Bibles. Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, You can have a seat. If you have your Bibles, feel free to flip open to Revelation, chapter 3. We're going to be in 22 today. We are finishing our series.

Revelation 3 · chapter mention

Faith That Sticks. We've been walking through the book of Revelation, chapters 2 and 3, where John- we believe the apostles writing from the aisle of Patmas to a group of seven churches. It is delivered to them in a clockwise fashion: starting in Ephesus, ending in Ephesus And we get to the last church on the route, Leotaa. You might have heard of this church. We often call it lukewarm leosa.

Revelation 2 · chapter mention

We'll dive right in. I'm not going to make you stand for the reading. It'll also be on the screen behind me. It says this to the angel of the church in Leosa: Write the amen. The faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God, says this: Hint, that's Jesus speaking.

I know your deeds that you're neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were cold or hot. So because you're lukewarm and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth, Because you say: "I am rich and have become wealthy and have need of nothing" and you do not know that you're wretched and miserable and poor, and blind and naked. I advise you to buy from me gold refined by fire so that you may become rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourselves or yourself and that the shame of your nakedness will not be revealed. And I salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see Those whom I love, I reprove and I discipline.

Therefore, be zealous, filled with passion 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 will dine with him and he with me. He who overcomes, I will grant to him to sit down with me on my throne, as I also overcame and sat down with my father on his throne. He who has an ear, let him hear what the spirit says to the churches".

And those with ears in the room said "Amen". Just a couple of you got ears today. Hopefully more people with ears present. Hey, how we doing? Just say good, if you're with me.

All right. That's what you should say, Even if you're having a bad day and you don't know that person that waves at you and say "Hey, how's your day going". If you can give your life story to me, but just just teaching basic social skills as an intro to my sermon today. I, I went on a personal retreat this week. Y'all might be thinking, "That dude retreats every day, He only works on Sunday".

Trust me, I work more than Sundays. But I went on a personal retreat, Had a friend, who had a connection with a cabin out in Pine Arizona, And so I went out there. It was free, which was dope, And I went and sat in the three-bedroom, two bath cabin. I did a little bit of hiking And I spent some time in prayer to God, pondering kind of the three big spaces of my life, my, my spiritual walk personally, my family and then this church. There are other areas, don't get me wrong, and I thought about those, but those are the three primary areas.

For many of you it's your life with God and your family, but for me it's interesting because when you come out and you start a church, obviously you're tapping into the entire kingdom of God. It's not just your church on an island. Yet at the same time, when you start a church, there's a lot of your own personal journey that is integrated into the journey of the church, And so it was kind of this, this trifecta of personal time with God, praying about my vision and goals for my family, and then church, family, really praying about what God has called us to. It was a really lifegiving time and I'm grateful I got to do it And I'd already prepped my message for this week. But I shifted the sermon title because of a conviction I got in that conversation I was having with God.

You see, I was pondering. I was pondering what, what do you want from me? How many of you in this room are above 30? Just raise your hand. There's a point in your 30s, I think, where you start to realize that the things you've been pursuing, the ambitions that you had, while valid and helpful, are limited in scope.

Even when you go start a church and you want to just do big, significant things for the kingdom of God, you get to this place where, when you do it week in, week out, you start to ask the Lord the question, and this was me last week. I was like Lord, not what more is there? I'm, I'm content in my relationship with Jesus, yet I'm not done in my improvement in my relationship with Jesus. And I was asking, I was like I still struggle with some of these things that I started with in my faith. I struggle, with what people think of me.

I struggle with this need to be significant. I struggle with insecurities. I still struggle with these things, Lord, And I said I don't think I'm going to get rid of them, by continuing to just have church every single week. I don't think I'm going to get rid of them if our church grows a little bit more. I don't think I'll get rid of them if everyone in this room decides to trust in Jesus and then next week y'all all start just operating at a like completely different level of function.

You know, like I don't think what happens outside of me is going to change the, the pain within me. And the Lord revealed to me something He said: "Your task in this world is, is not to stress out about all the external, It's not to be something, It's not to earn something, It's not to be special, It's to be just like my son- And that's my sermon title of the day- It's just like him. I think the goal in life is not overly complicated, It's to be like Jesus. And the beauty is, not only do we have access to God because of what Jesus did, but we have access to who Jesus was because of the word that he left us. You can be like Jesus- And I read you that passage a second ago- because we have a church called Leodysa or a church at Leodysia.

I don't know what they called themselves, Maybe they called themselves the holy huddle in Leodysia. I don't know what they called themselves, but we know it was a church in the city of Leadya, A city of self-sufficiency. And they're being indicted by the Apostle John because of their lukewarm behavior and focus on external things rather than things that actually sustain them. And what we see in the first verse that articulates my sermon title to you is this: in verse 14: says to the angel of the church in Leodysia: right, the amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God, says this. Now, before we even jump into the indictment that John has for the church at Leodysa- and there is quite an indictment- we see how he introduces the topic of lukewarm behavior.

He gives them a description of Jesus And the first description he gives is the faithful and true witness. And when you hear the term witness, I don't necessarily I do because I know the Bible a little bit. But you don't jump to thinking about Jesus, being a witness, though he was. You might think of John the Baptist, who was a witness to Jesus. You might even think about yourself, because in 2 Corinthians, chapter 5, Paul says: "You called to be ambassadors for Christ".

2 Corinthians 5 · chapter mention

Just like Jesus was in the world making reconciliation, the world to God, We're supposed to be ambassadors, representatives, witnesses in the world, making reconciliation from people who don't know God and introducing them to God. We're called to be witnesses. But right here he says the faithful and true witness. He's telling the church at Leodysa. And I want to tell you that Jesus is your greatest example, He's your savior, but he's your greatest example as to how to live a life that gives you peace and abundance here and eternity with God in heaven.

He's our savior, He's also our example, And so what I want to do is I want to break down through this text a few ways that, like you, can be more like Jesus. Y'all with me, All right? First question I want to ask you is this: Are you polarizing? Now, let me break that down, because I think it'll be helpful for you to break it down. Polarizing means like, like you're either one or the other People either like you or they don't.

People either, like, really really know where you stand, and so they like you for it, or they really really know where you stand, so they don't like you for it. You're often a polarizing figure if you're a leader, because there are things you're trying to cast vision for that some of the people you're leading don't quite understand, and so you can be polarizing. Some of the statements that I'm going to make are going to tick people off. Some of the statements that I make are going to make people really excited. Some of the people that get really excited and get really ticked off get that way about the same very statement, because some of those statements that come from God's word are polarizing.

If, if nobody was, if, if anybody is polarizing in the world, it was Jesus. Jesus came in and he's hanging out with tax collectors and sinners, yet he's holier than all the Pharisees, That's. I mean he's a polarizing figure, You, he. He preached parables in such a way that were confounding Pharisees, yet he was so gracious and simple that people could connect with him. He was polarizing.

Are you polarizing The church at Leodysa? They were not polarizing, They were kind of somewhere in the middle. You might call them stagnant. Here's what it says in verse 15. I know your deeds that you're neither- neither cold nor hot.

I wish that you were cold or hot. So because you were lukewarm and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. What an indictment. I don't want to be spit out of Jesus's mouth. You know what I'm saying.

That'd be, that'd be pretty, pretty stressful, . But here, here's where we miss it. Sometimes I think we read that passage and we think I wish you were either cold or hot, And I've heard the youth pastor say this before. They're like: "He would rather you be all the way in or all the way out". That's not what this text means.

When it says neither cold nor hot, what he's saying is: "I wish you were one or the other, because where you are in the middle is the least effective". But let me break it down to you using first century terminology and mindset. Now, before I do that, I'm going to give you context. Context is super cool and interesting, but sometimes simplicity helps. Amen, somebody, All right, If, if I had a glass of water right here, whether I pulled it out the fridge or I pulled it off the pot, the pot that was boiling.

If I leave it here for a certain period of time, it becomes-. Room temperature- lukewarm, whatever you want to say, it becomes whatever the environment is That is lukewarm. Lukewarm is becoming whatever the environment is. Because you sat there and did nothing. So I could preach the whole sermon, not give you any context, and you could leave with this point.

If you're, if you're not polarizing, meaning you're not one way or the other, you're not putting forth effort in any direction, you are simply hearing the message of Jesus and sitting there and doing nothing with it. You might be lukewarm, You, You're just stagnant. And I don't know about you, but if I'm going to choose, I like warm water in my tea. If I drink English breakfast tea on the regular, I like warm water in my coffee. I like cold water when I came out from a run.

But that lukewarm water I'll drink it, just because it's there, It's easy, And I think a lot of us were fine in our faith just because you know, I got it, It's there. I think lukewarm people they're not just like Jesus, They just like him a little bit, And I think that's where a lot of our church- not our church, but the church is. Is we really like the idea of Jesus? I think he's a nice dude. I think he makes me feel less judged than the other people, make me feel I like the Jesus, that is gracious and forgiving.

I like the Jesus that confounds the Pharisees. I like Jesus a lot. He is a great teacher. A lot of us like him. I think if you were to ask a demon, literally if, if you like Jesus, say "Well, we're against him, but you know he's a, he's a pretty big deal", I think we could all agree: Jesus is a big deal.

He's worthy to be listened to in different ways. But if you just view Jesus as a Gandhi figure and not your savior, you're missing out on something crucial. And if you view him as your savior but you just sit there, I don't. It doesn't make sense. And so you got.

You got to be polarizing. I think a lot of us fail to be polarizing. We're we're lukewarm in our faith because of a few different reasons, And I'm going to give you some context to articulate my reasons for that. For this, the first reason is your source is too far away. You're lukewarm because your source is too far away.

Now, simply put, if God is far from you, you're not going to act much like Jesus. So you got to spend time with God. But in this context, it's pretty interesting what happens when he calls him lukewarm. It's not coming out of just some nebulous vague space where the audience wouldn't have understood it. They lived in Leotaa.

Leotaa was a city kind of in between, a city called Hierapouloss and Colasse. It, it's just several miles from those places, but Hierropolis was known, because it had hot springs and these hot springs in Hierropolis supposedly had healing qualities to them. And then Colasse had cold springs and Leota didn't have a cold spring, didn't have a hot spring. It didn't have anything. In fact, the only thing we find in archaeology today is an aqueduct that was piped in about six miles from a colder source.

I think it was south, but it was piped in through an aqueduct And what would happen is, because of the way the water was from that source, a lot of mineral buildup would happen on its way in the aqueduct. They actually see the calcification- is that how you say it? They see the calcification in the aqueducts that show that the mineral deposits were really heavy in this water And because it was piped from such a far distance, by the time it arrived, not only was it filled with sediment, but it was not cold, it was not hot, it was lukewarm and it didn't taste good. So, in other words, Laosy was a lot like Phoenix, where you need a water softener in order to like. You know, I didn't like it with the water softener.

You need someone else's water. That's what you need. You need to pipe that water in order to enjoy the taste of that water. I love Buckeye, but I don't necessarily like the water out of my tap. This is Leotaa, And so when he says, "You're lukewarm, I'd spit it out of my mouth", thought they know what it's like to taste that sediment richch water.

They're like "It's not good" Because they were so distant from the source. What was coming in was not ultimately helpful for what they wanted it to be helpful for. This is us in our faith. If you are too far away from God- and what do I mean by that? I know you showed up at church and this is a way to get you closer to God, to help you apprehend the nature of God, but this isn't all that there is.

God has given you access to his word, to his Holy Spirit, And by the Holy Spirit and its power, as you read the word, you can actually apprehend who Jesus is. And the closer you get to who he is, the better your life becomes, the more confident in your eternity you are. You are assured in your faith and you start developing into the po the masterpiece that God is building you into. But when you're far from God, not only do you not look like him, but you become stagnated, like you're just not doing anything. It's crazy to me how we live our lives and we say that we believe in a guy that died 2,000 years ago and then rose from the grave and we do nothing with it.

I say this all the time because it just doesn't make sense. I'm going to say this till I'm blue in the vein: It does not make sense to believe that crazy proposition and then to be lukewarm about it is because we're too far from the source. We get so disconnected that that we forget it's something that's actually like really helpful to live our lives with. That's me too. We all get there.

We all struggle with staying close to God because in some ways it's still intangible to us. Connecting with God of the universe when he's not physically present right in front of me is a difficult thing to do, And so we move on to things that are more palpable, able to be touched, seen, heard, felt, And so we focus on those things. This is Leosa. They're getting focused on their life And they're letting their life impact their faith. That's us I.

I want to really encourage you: Get closer to your source. If you're feeling lukewarm in your faith, The second thing is you're filled with sediment. That might be why you're lukewarm. I already told you that's what happened when it was piped over. They found this all over the ancient Roman Empire.

When they look at aqueducts, they'll see the calcification, because when you have to pipe in water from a source really, far away, that has any minerals in it, when it comes over, it continues to stagnate and the sediment becomes richer and richer and richer And by the time you get to the end of that aqueduct, it's filled with sediment and it tastes terrible. Maybe in your life it's not that you haven't tried to get close to God, It's that your life is filled with stuff that is preventing you from connecting with God. So it's not just that you didn't try. I think all of you are trying. You should give yourself a, a mental pat on the back right now because you showed up this morning.

You fought with them, kids. You said: "Oh, we'll go to church this morning". You're like: "You're going to church this morning". You literally had a shouting match on your way here. But you showed up here because you're trying to get close to God.

But if there's sediment in your life that is built up, it's like Hebrews says, that it's an encumbrance that you need to shake off so that you can apprehend the true nature of God. You got to shake off that sediment. You got to get rid of that stuff. If, if you want it to be more fresh, if you want to receive Revelation from God, you got to get rid of that sediment. What sediment, you might ask?

I've talked about it all the last seven weeks. I'm not trying to har up on a long list of sins, but I do want to say this: Anything between you and God is a sediment that, when it builds up, will prevent you from getting where you want to be. It's an idol that keeps you from God. Sediment. What are the sediments in your life that you need to just get rid of filter out so you can apprehend God and stop being lukewarm.

Number three, and this is what I love about reading the Bible: you're not putting forth any effort. Let me explain what I mean by that. I always got a little disenchanted because preachers try to come up with the most interesting contextual clue to give you so that you feel excited about the Bible for once. But sometimes the most interesting things about the Bible come in the most simple ways. This happened a couple years ago when I was reading this text and I was reading u an archaeological book by a guy named- his last name is Mick Ray- and he kind of wrote you- you know your pinnacle work on the archaeology of the ancient church- and I was reading about Leodysa and he talks about some archaeology that they had found in the early 2000s.

And some of the archaeology they found was: oh gosh, it's going to be so simple it was like pottery. Some of the pottery held ice and No, And some of the pottery was meant for boiling water. And so let me ask you this: , hot and cold are good because, like I said, room temperature stuff just sits there, but hot and cold. Take effort. Y'all tell me: what do you got to do to get something hot in this place?

. Water hot. What do you got to do? - Boil it?

. You got to boil it. What do you got to do to get something cold? - Freeze it. Picture being in the first century guys, Can you?

Oh, yeah, Yeah, I'll just go put it on the gas stove, turn it on, make sure it clicks and do that a couple times, because I'm not good at making it click because my stove's older than it should be. And then I put it on there and then I wait for it to boil and I go like play on my phone until it's done, And then I get it and then I put my little tea tea bag in there, or whatever I'm going to do with the hot water, or I put my pasta in there and all that other stuff, and it's good. If I want to freeze something, I just go put it in the refrigerator that I bought a while back and when it breaks I'll get someone to fix it. Or I'll just go buy a new one, because for some reason I got enough money to buy a refrigerator. When it breaks I don't even know how.

I've always had money for a refrigerator, but I got it. But if you lived in the first century, if you wanted to boil something, yo, what'd you have to get? Wood, Yo, you had to get wood. You had to go find wood And then you had to. They didn't have lighters back then.

Maybe they had some form of matches, but I imagine the way they lit a fire was way different than we light a fire these days. You don't just go put a little-, that propane on there, or kerosene or whatever you want to put on it, because you're lazy and you can't really do it with rubbing two sticks together. They might have had to rub two sticks together. They had to figure out some way to put it together. Then they get the fire.

But you can't just put the pot on the fire, because wood burns And when wood burns and it starts to break apart, then the pot would fall. So you have to get something to put over the fire. Then you got to get the pot And you can't just go buy the pot from Costco. You got to make the pot And then you put the pot on there. Not everybody had pots, guys.

They went to the river and grabbed stuff or they borrowed it from somebody else. They're borrowing people's pots. You didn't have to go next door. You used to go to Costco, pay for the $2 pots, or Walmart, get the $1 bowl. You could put it there and then you put it on top After you make the pot, and then you had to boil it and once you were done boiling you had to wait on it because you didn't want it to be too hot.

When you're about to drink that water, You wanted to put it in your bath. You had to wait to get in that bath because it would have been too hot, But then if you waited too long, it'd be too cold If you wanted something to be hot. It took effort. Don't get me started on the cold. I mean, how do you make something cold?

You can't just put it in the dirt. No, there were. There was pottery that showed that people would go up into the mountains in Fri, the Frigian region- It's funny, It's called the Friian region Fridge. They had to go to the fridge, Friian, Anyways, whatever. They had to go to the refrigerant region, walk up into a mountain and put the snow into pots and then they would bring it back down and they would try to have some sort of insulation so that they could bring it back down.

Now I don't want to overplay that, because it's not like they were just walking up every day to go get ice. Hey, you want some cold water? I got some ice for you. This isn't frozen here. You know.

I don't know what exactly they were doing, but I know it took effort. It even took effort to pipe in the water they were able to get, And many of us in our faith, we think it's just gonna fall in our lap. But I want to tell you this: the beauty of our faith is that salvation does essentially fall in your lap, and you got a choice whether to lean into it or not. Confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead. You will be saved.

But once you step into that relationship, if you want a dynamic relationship with God, if you want the Holy Spirit to speak to you and through you, if you want to feel assured in your faith, it takes effort. You can sit and be lukewarm. I think there are a bunch of people who are going to live stagnated all the way into eternity And you know that's cool. I don't know what's going to happen for them in heaven, but I want the well done, my good and faithful servant by the end of this thing. So I'm gonna have effort applied in my life And you might be lukewarm because you think it's not going to take any effort, And I need you to know if it took effort from the one we're trying to follow.

It's going to take effort from you. What they say, if they persecute me, they will persecute you. It's going to take effort. Leodysia wasn't willing to put in the effort. They were too used to being self-sufficient and doing things themselves to look at their faith and really ponder what it looks like to follow Jesus faithfully.

That's the first question about your lukewarmness. But then he goes in and there's so much good context into this that I can't give it all to you, but I'm going to do my best to give you something that's helpful. But I want to ask you this question. This is what happens was happening in Leodysa is they were shopping at the wrong store? Guys, I know it's hot in here.

It ain't lukewarm at all. It's warm in here. I see people just waving that. I just want you to know. I feel it.

I feel it too. If that water were to sit right here, it would be a solid 78°, And that is not okay. I'm going to work on it this week, guys. I'm just letting you know, but I want to ask you this: Are you shopping at the wrong store, like Leotaa? Here's what it says in verse 17.

Because you say, "I am rich and have become wealthy and have need of nothing" And you do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked. Because you don't know this, I advise you to buy from me gold refined by fire so that you may become rich in white garments, so that you may clothe yourselves and that the shame of your nakedness will not be revealed. And I salv to anoint your eyes so that you may see What's happening in Leosa is they're really excited about their own self-sufficiency. I'm going to give you three specific areas that they're excited about their self-sufficiency, and it's so cool because it's right there in the text. Number one: , they were a free city, independent in some ways of the Roman Empire.

We know that they were independent because in AD60, this is about 30 years after Jesus died, about 20 years before this is written, there was an earthquake in the area around Leodysa, in this frigian region, And Rome offered to bail them out and rebuild to pay for it. And these guys in Leosa, they're so self-sufficient, they're like "Nah, we're good". They did not accept the money and they rebuilt it themselves. And there's actually coinage that we found in. Archaeologists have found- I didn't go over there and find it, but archaeologists have found it- And it says: on this: in Greek it says autonomous.

You know what autonomous means, right? Same word in Greek. It means independent, freethinking, self-sufficient. In other words, we do stuff on our own here in Leodysa. The second way that they felt that they were fairly independent is- I don't know why this is and I don't know enough about shephering to tell you anything about it other than that I know this was true because I found it in primary sources- is that they had a certain type of sheep in that region that had a kind of blackened wool and they were really popular for selling black wool for certain types of clothing like black wool.

That was their thing. And then the third thing is they had a medical school there and they had developed- they call it- this thing called friian powder. I don't know much about it, I just know what I researched. But they call it friigian powder And what they would do is they mix it with water, put it on a bandage and put it over people's eyes, and it had been known to cure some levels of blindness. That all happened in the frigian region, Leosa, the city, And when John is writing to them, he knows that they believe themselves to be self-sufficient and they're lukewarm spiritually because they've been so solid physically.

They pulled up their bootstraps after the earthquake, They figured it out, They got good coinage, They've got good eyes and they've got good wool to sell to people. But you can be the best in humanity physically and still insufficient spiritually. This is what John is saying to them. He's saying: "Guys like I counsel you to buy from me, because what you've been buying, the store you've been shopping at, will never provide you what you're genuinely looking for. I counsel you to buy me gold refined by fire, rather than the gold coins you put together that say that you're self-sufficient.

I counsel you to buy clothing from me that's white, not blackened by the wool that you put together in your own self-sufficiency. I counsel you to buy from me eyes that will heal you and help you to see, rather than boast in the stuff that you put on a bandage that helps people with limited vision. That's all physical but it doesn't help you in eternity. He's telling this group of self-sufficient, lukewarm people: put forth some effort in your faith, because the faithful and true witness did that himself. He's saying: don't be concerned with fitting yourself with black wool, having the right coinage or having the right medical equipment.

In fact, I'm not concerned at all about what you can fit into. I'm concerned about fitting you for the calling that I've given you. That's what John is telling him. And again, when we look at the faithful true witness, what do we find? We find that he wasn't.

He wasn't just shopping around, grabbing stuff and making it fit that he was fitting his life toward the calling that his father had placed on him. I, I wrote this down and I think it'll be helpful. We buy clothes that fit, but he's trying to adjust your fit to the clothes. And if you want the white garments, you've got to be okay with reproof from the Lord. If you want what he can give you, you got to be okay with being refined by fire.

I, ah, I've learned over the years to love the reproof of the Lord. Why? It wasn't natural to me at first, but I've learned over the years that the more I trust him, even when he puts me through a difficult circumstance, he brings me out more refined than I was before going into the trial. It's like a lot of you when you want to go to the gym and you go there and you're like, "This is more difficult than I thought it was" And we leave because we're insecure about how people look at us when they're looking in the mirror at themselves. You know what I'm saying.

That's how we go in and we stop. But if we move forward and push, I'm lit literally in the weight room. If you push in the weight room just past what you're comfortable with, put in a little exertion and effort, you're going to find that there's stretching that occurs And that stretching will produce something better in your life. In fact, when we look at our example, we see that he was stretched on a cross in order to fit the calling that God had for him. Did he want to go that way?

He said: "If the cup can pass for me, I'll let it, But I'm willing to be stretched for your will". Because he didn't see the reproof of God as something to lament or be frustrated about. He says this in verse 19, . "Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline. Therefore, be zealous and repent.

I didn't mention this in the first service, but he tells us so explicitly what he wants us to do. A lukewarm person is someone who sits there, but he tells us to be zealous, full of passion and zeal for the Lord. I think they're zealous about their self-sufficiency, but they're not very zealous about what God's called them to. I think you can connect with the Leodysian church. I can connect with that church because it's easier to sit down at my house, do Netflix and chill rather than call somebody and have a difficult conversation.

But here's what I know. I know Netflix. I didn't mean it that way. I just meant I'd sit down and I'm chilling at my house while watching Netflix. You know what I'm talking about.

All right, I'm just watching some Netflix. That's so much easier but produces nothing. Yeah, When I make that call, even if I'm not looking forward to that call, I'm talking from the pastoral perspective. I know God's going to shape me through it and I'm going to grow through it. I might have made some mistakes, but God's going to take those mistakes and flip them for my good, because he works all things together for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purposes.

I, I'm so excited when I listen to the council of the apostle. He says: "I counsel you to buy from me. Stop shopping at the wrong store. I'm going to be honest. Can I be honest here?

Your neighborhood's not going to give you what you desire. The people that are next door to you, who you're friends with right now- but you get offended when they don't invite you to something, Even if you're the best friends and they always invite you- they're not going to give you what you need long term. I mean goodness, even the people at this church aren't going to give you, ultimately, what you need. They'll help get you there if they're doing the right thing by our culture, but ultimately, unless you look to Jesus, the author and perfector of your faith, you're not going to get where you ultimately want to be. Jesus is where we're going with this.

So, shop where he's selling, And it's interesting. My final question that I wanted to ask is: is what's your vibe on door-to-door salesman? Because it's an interesting concept, right? But here's what he says in verse 20. Behold, I stand at the door and knock.

If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come into him and will dine with him and he with me. He who overcomes. I will grant to him to sit down with me on my throne, as also I overcame and sat down with my father on his throne. Literally, he's standing at the door and knocking And, based on what I experienced when I came out here to Buckeye and I was knocking on doors trying to hand flyers to our new church, there's a bunch of no, a bunch of no, soliciting signs around here. I'm not mad about it, I get it, But sometimes, sometimes you need to recognize that God's trying to get into your skull something different than you've been presently thinking on or experiencing.

And when he's in, oh my gosh, when he's knocking, just open the door. But I think the people in Leodysa are looking at John's message, knowing that they're self-sufficient. They're treating them like Rome- Hey, we'll give you all this money to help you repair your village. They're like I'm good on my own. And Jesus knocks at the door in a similar way And he's like: hey, hey, I'm going to counsel you to buy something from me because I can do something that's ultimately helpful.

I'm going to come in and make your life better, But we're like ho, I'm good on my own, and John's saying he stands at the door and knocks and he takes it a little layer deeper. When it comes to the context. There was this thing called hospitium. It's a Latin word, means hospitality, right? Hospitium was this kind of general rule in ancient Rome, where, when you were in an independent city or really any city on the fringes of the Roman Empire, specifically as you went further and further east, there were a lot more Roman military personnel And they would live alongside and interact with people in these free or independent cities.

And the rule of hospitium meant that if a Roman soldier knocked on your door, you were to open up, invite them in and offer food, not just for yourself but for this person as well. And it got to the point in Leosa and some of these other cities. Now, this is- this is conjecture from various scholars. This is not hard archaeological evidence, but what they're estimating is that in Leosa, specifically because of their independent nature and self-sufficiency, it would have been a city where, when the Roman military were there, they knew they could go to the doors of these people knock and they had plenty of resources to be able to open that door, invite them in to dine and give them some of their food. And this happened so frequently that when a Roman soldier would knock, the people that lived in that city would become frustrated about it.

Now, a lot of that, some of that, is conjecture, but it is still a true concept in the ancient world that you were required to open the door. Here's what John's trying to tell them. I, I know you feel like me inviting you into a life of reproof, me telling you that Jesus, knocking on your door, it might feel like something that you get frustrated by. It feels the same way when that solar guy comes by your door and knocks and you don't want to answer the door because you're so used to something different, because you know they're going to ask something from you. But what John is saying is: Jesus doesn't ask from you, He asks for you.

He asks when he you, when you open that door, he's going to come in and you're going to dine with him and he's going to offer the provision. You don't have to do anything. Says: "Come all who are weary and I will give you rest for your souls". Jesus offers you something radically different. It's not just physical eyes, It's it's vision for your life.

It's not just coinage, It's real gold refined by the fire. It's not just opening the door to give him food, It is him offering you a life of abundance. This is what Jesus wants to do, And John's trying to tell this lukewarm group of people: "Open up". And when you open up, you're going to realize that that lukewarm life you've been living in self-sufficiency was never going to get you anywhere. It's only his grace, offered on the cross, shown by the resurrection from the dead, that will give you what you need.

It is his grace that's sufficient. And I just want to tell someone in this room right now: you might be a believer, someone who's been following Jesus, but you've been lukewarm. Time to stop. He's knocking already. Open the door, And when he comes in and he dines with you, he's going to show you a life not of just physical abundance, but a life of following him.

It requires reproof, It requires discipline, It requires refining by fire, But on the other end of that are benefits that far outweigh I. Salve in coinage is so much better. It's hard, Requires stretching. It's not something to go, just try on. It's something that you got to radically get in shape for.

But here's the beauty: To enter into that it's a free gift of God to stick with it, to have a faith that sticks, to follow, after the model's faithfulness, Jesus's faithfulness. It does take effort, intentionality and a willingness to revolve every aspect of your life around Jesus. So, for those of you who are followers of Jesus- open up, For those of you who are struggling with the idea of the resurrection, who have not invited Jesus into your life to lead you, I want to encourage you. All you have to do- that's funny, Hannah, She- I just got a text on my thing. She said: second service.

Today. That's her telling me my first service sucked. Anyways, I'm just kidding, That's not what you were saying, but kind of, kind of. I want you, I just if, if you've not invited Jesus in, I want you to invite him in, And all you have to do is confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, Believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead and you will be saved. That's all it takes.

And so I want to pray right now for those of you who are believers. Let's man, let's commit to a life of fully following Jesus. And for those of you who aren't, let's see what it looks like when you invite Jesus in. And I, I got to tell you this on this retreat. I started getting really stressed out because I felt like it was on me to determine the things we're supposed to do next year, the sermon series that we do next year, And again, it is obviously I've got to work on that, .

But as I prayed about it, the Lord just gave me a piece and it said: "Hey, stop stressing about the very specific, perfect thing that you're going to give to these people. Unless I'm in it, it's not going to be helpful". And he said: "Your responsibility is so singular, so basic, so simple". Kierard says to, to simplify your mind is to will one thing, and this is the one thing that he gave me: Don't focus on all this other stuff, The Lord told me. He said: "Just be like him".

Just like Jesus. That's it, Not all this other stuff. Just like Jesus, just be like Jesus. It's. It's not.

It's not easy, but it is simple. And I'm going to live my life in such a way that I'm just trying to be like Jesus. And if a group of people follows me here at this church, that's cool. It could be small, It could be big, But regardless of how big of a following I got is just like Jesus for me. Regardless of whether we're the biggest church, smallest church, we're going to be a faithful church.

I'm going to be just like Jesus, And when you live your life, I think it'll be such a blessing to you, You don't? You don't overly concern yourself with what people think, because you can't move hearts, He can. So just like Jesus. Every sermon series, I kept thinking, trying to be creative, but just like Jesus, every event, are we doing too much? Is it like Jesus?

Then, chill out about it. You can do it. You can not do it, It's going to be fine. Just be like Jesus. So I want to invite those of you who don't have Jesus right now to just invite him into your life.

So if everybody would bow their heads and close their eyes- we pray a prayer here together out loud, for the benefit of those who are inviting Jesus in for the first time. So if we could pray that prayer out loud, just repeat after me: Say: "God, I believe that Jesus is your son. I believe he died on the cross and rose from the grave. I believe he forgives me of my sin. God, help me believe.

Help me believe in the resurrection. God, guide me And I commit right now to follow you, to put forth a little effort for the rest of my life. God, it's in Jesus's name that I pray these things. Can we celebrate those right now, who just trusted in Jesus? Who lifted up that prayer?

Hey, if that's you, I want you to let us.