All right, Revelation chapter
3, we're going to begin at verse 14, and we'll read the remainder
of the chapter. This is the last of the seven
letters that our Lord Jesus dictated to be sent to the seven churches
in Asia Minor. To the angel of the church in
Laodicea write, these are the words of the Amen, the faithful
and true witness. The ruler of God's creation,
I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish
you were either one or the other, so because you are lukewarm,
neither hot nor cold, I'm about to spit you out of my mouth.
You say I am rich, I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing,
but you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor,
blind, and naked. I counsel you to buy from me
gold refined in the fire so you can become rich, and white clothes
to wear so you can cover your shameful nakedness, and salve
to put on your eyes so you can see. Those whom I love, I rebuke
and discipline. So be earnest and repent. Here
I am. I stand at the door and knock.
If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in
and eat with him and he with me. To him who overcomes, I will
give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I 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. If I recall correctly, in all
the preceding churches, the six of them, even though there were
some stern rebukes for some of them, there was always something
in the church for which the Lord could commend the church. Laodicea
stands as the only church for which the Lord had no words of
commendation." To others, he would say, you've done this,
that, and the other, but I'll give you this. You have stood
firm in opposition against this, that, and the other. Something
like that. Laodicea, nothing good. Of all the churches, of
all those seven churches, I most certainly would not want to have
been part of this church at Laodicea. The letter they received was
pure rebuke and no words of tender affection. Words of love, as
we'll find out, but still no words of tender affection. Our Lord says here, these are
the words of the amen, the faithful and true witness. What does the
amen mean? Well, when he calls himself the
amen, he says, I'm the so be it. And the so be it, actually
in a King James version, our Lord would use this word, amen,
when he would say, verily, verily, I say unto you. You remember
that phrase from the King James? Often that was found in the gospels.
Verily, verily, I say unto you. And what you find in the Greek
is amen, amen, I say to you. And what did he indicate by that? Well, first the seriousness of
what he was about to say, and then the absolute steadfastness
of what he was going to say. This has always been true, it's
true now, and it always will be true. And so he says here
to these people who had forsaken their first love, who had once
held things to be true and important, and now, yeah, maybe they hold
them to be true, but not so much important anymore. He says, the
one that's talking to you is the amen. I said amen, amen to
you, and you said amen, ah, whatever. You see how our Lord always comes
to these people in a name that's well suited to the problems they're
having? He said, you're not an amen.
There was a time when you made a strong profession of faith.
There was a time when the things of God were everything to you. Where's the amen? Where's the
so be it? He says, I'm the amen and the
true witness. He said, when you witness of
yourselves that you believed and that these things were important
to you and that they were your very life, where's that witness? Has that truth ceased to be?
He says, I'm the faithful. He says, once you said you believed,
once you stood in the face of great opposition and you stood
firm, not so much now. Once you were consumed with the
things of God, not so much now. He says, I'm faithful. I haven't
changed. I didn't move. I didn't quit.
What happened? And he says, and I'm the ruler
of God's creation. Now the first of them addressed
their problem and how he has been unlike them. They were not faithful. They were not true. They did
not remain steadfast like an amen. And the last one, He identifies
them in a name that should be taken by them as a threat. I'm
the Lord. It may be difficult for us to
do this, but it's something we must do to the best of our ability,
and that is to understand, as Paul said, the goodness and the
severity of the Lord. Now, I tend to emphasize the
amen, faithful, and true witness aspects of our Lord. That regardless
of how we are, he remains faithful. That when we fail, he doesn't.
That when we're sinful, he's still righteous. When we turn
our backs, he never does. probably need more of that, simply
because given the background most of us come from, we kind
of sense our sinfulness and unworthiness at all times, and need to be
reminded of God's grace. But here's what happens, and
I think it may have been what happened to Laodicea. They became so taken
up with the gracious and merciful aspects of the gospel, They forgot
the greatness of the one whom they claim to worship, and how
serious it is to trifle with him. They said such things like,
well, you know, salvation's by grace, hey, it's all a done deal,
so why should I concern myself about anything? I still love
the gospel. Whether or not I go to hear it
is of little consequence. I love the gospel, whether I
give myself in pursuit of the things of God, it's irrelevant. It'll all work out in the end.
The Lord says I'm the amen, I am the faithful one, I am the true
witness, and I am the Lord. This one in whom you and I take
such comfort And we rejoice so much that indeed he is faithful
and of tender compassions and of mercy immeasurable. Let us
never forget he is the Lord who holds the destiny of every man
in his hands, who is, as he said, the ruler of God's creation. And no matter how tenderly we
are connected to him, we must remember we are connected to
the King. Now that's a hard thing for us
to get in our minds all at once, I realize. We tend to go back
and forth. We tend to have a careless comfort
in him, or on the other hand, a fearful legalism. Well, we don't want either one.
And we're not trying to find a halfway point where we're partly
legalistically fearful and partly comfort in His tender compassions.
We want, if possible, and I imagine only the Spirit of God can enable
us to do that, we want to hold both the greatness and glory
of His sovereign rule over all things, including us, and His
tender compassion towards us. And not use His tender compassions
as an excuse to ignore His glorious, sovereign authority over us. nor use His glorious sovereign
authority over us as a reason to abandon pure and simple faith
in Him, but to hold them both at the best we can. He says in verse 15, I know your
deeds that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either
one or the other. Our Lord taught us on the one
hand, do not judge or you will be judged. But the same Lord
that says that says judge by right judgment. And James tells
us that faith, and by that he means a profession of faith,
that is not accompanied by deeds consistent with that profession
of faith. That's a dead faith and it doesn't
save. So our Lord can come here and
he says, I know your deeds. I know what you're doing. And
he passes a judgment on them based on what they're doing.
You say, well, the Lord knows their hearts. Yes, he does. He
knows their hearts. And he could say, as one who
knows your hearts, I pass this judgment on you. But they might
in turn make some kind of objection based upon their works. Well,
did we not do this? And did we not do that? And have
we not? So he says, look, I know what
you're doing. I know your works. Don't bring up to me what you're
doing, because I know what you're doing. And what you're doing
reveals this. You're neither hot nor cold. In essence, these people were
trying to get along with everybody. And the only way to get along
with everybody in this world, if you're a believer, is to be
a professed believer, but let's not get overly serious about
it. You know, the world is perfectly happy for you to go to church
on Sunday. In fact, we see this kind of stuff being openly said
in our culture today. Leave your religion at church. I bet you those in Laodicea were
perfectly happy to do that. They could go to church and they
would hear a sermon and they would say, I agree with that,
amen. And walk out the door and it
meant nothing. Once they got out the door, they
didn't tell anybody about it, they didn't live according to
it. There was a time they did. For
he says, you have forsaken your first love. There was a time
when this church probably was an irritation to the community
around them. And I understand this, I'm not
saying it's our purpose to go out there and irritate them.
But if we shine the light into this dark world, it's going to
irritate those who love darkness rather than light. And the only
way we're going to be able to avoid getting the anger of the
people of darkness stirred up is if we turn off the light.
And we walk around in darkness. But he says, I know your deeds.
I know how you act. I see what you do. I'm not just
looking at what you do when you meet together for your worship
services. I see what you do during the
week. I see how you are at work. I see how you are at home. I
see how you are with your friends and those with whom you enjoy
hobbies and stuff like that. I see how you are when you go
to your job and you deal with people in business. I see all
of this. And here's what I can tell you,
he says, to lay out a seal. Here's what I can tell you by
what you're doing. You aren't hot and you aren't cold. And
he said, I worry that you are one or the other. Now I'm one of those odd people
who actually likes lukewarm drinks. I go to the restaurant and they
pour me a cup of coffee and they'll come back in about five or 10
minutes, you know, fill you up on that. I said, no, I haven't
drunk any of it yet. I'm waiting for it to cool down. And somebody
says, would you like a glass of ice water? And I'd say, no,
just get me some out of the tap. That's how I like it. Most people
like things hot or cold. I can tell you this, I'm not
particularly fond of lukewarm food, so maybe we can go with food
here. I like my food to be ice cream or something out of the
oven, you know. But here's what our Lord is saying.
You have taken a position in the middle, and I don't like
middle positions. Stand in one place or the other.
Align yourself with the world or align yourself with me. Follow
the world or follow me. You can't do both. Our Lord said,
when he was here in the flesh, he said, no man can serve two
masters. Now you'll notice this. The Lord
did not say no man should serve two masters. He said nobody can. And here's the problem in Laodicea.
They were trying, but what the end result was is they were just
serving the world. Our Lord went on to say, you cannot serve God.
And the King James says mammon, we don't use that word anymore,
unless we're reading the King James Bible, but it just means
riches or anything in which a man might trust or take confidence. All those pursuits of the world.
He said, you can't serve God and serve the other. they were trying. Therefore they would not with
their mouths utter a denial of Christ, but neither would they
with their mouths utter a confession of Him in the face of this world.
They tried as best they could when out in the world and away
from believers to keep their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ
a secret thing. Because after all, They wanted
folks in the church to like them and folks in the world. He said, I wish you were either
one or the other. And you know, we're often the same way. I can
handle an outright unbeliever. I can deal with an atheist as
long as he doesn't get arrogant about it. I understand atheism. And I love being around a believer. I mean a full-blown, bona fide
believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. What is difficult to deal with
is these people who try to be a little bit of both. And when
they're around other believers, they're talking about how much
they love the gospel. But as soon as they're away from
them and among the worldlings, you wouldn't have a clue that
they believe God. And they say how much they love
the gospel. But do not bother themselves to hear it. I remember going to a, well it
was a conference in Cherokee. Probably this was 25 years ago.
But I met some fella, I'd never met him before. That often happened
at these conferences, you know, people come from all over. And
he was just talking about how much he loved the gospel. And
it was Rolf Barnard this, Rolf Barnard that. And Rolf Barnard
was a faithful preacher of the gospel, and he could tell you
about this message by Rolf Barnard and that message by Rolf Barnard,
that and the other. Well, when you're standing there
talking to him, you're thinking to yourself, this must be a man
who really loves and believes the gospel of the Lord Jesus
Christ. Then I found out he doesn't go to church anywhere. He was
perfectly happy to listen to a man on the tape, but he would
not bother himself to go to a ministry of week-by-week instruction in
the Word of God and align himself with the people of God anywhere. You know what that tells me?
I mean, the Lord said by these deeds, certain kind of deeds,
you know, you can't tell something about a person. This fellow wasn't
in love with the gospel, he was in love with Rolf Barnard. He loved the fire. that Rolf
Barnard spoke with. He liked the way that Rolf Barnard,
and I know most of you have not heard his manner of speaking,
but he was kind of like a John the Baptist, and the tone of
his preaching was quite often a lot of finger-pointing, and
it was needed in that day. But he liked that. He liked it
that Rolf Barnard was condemning them, because this man didn't
see himself as them, But if he would go to church and sit under
a week-by-week ministry of a pastor, he found out that sometimes a
finger was pointed to him. He didn't want that, so nothing.
He was neither cold nor hot about Christ. So the Lord says in verse 16,
because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I'm about to spit
you out of my mouth. Our Lord didn't threaten any
of the other churches with something like that. Have you ever bitten into something
you thought, you know, some food you thought was going to be nice
and warm, and it wasn't? It amazes me how the taste of
food changes with temperature. And, you know, you pull one of
those sealed Containers Tupperware or something like that out of
the refrigerator some leftovers, and you open up your I hate this
I don't mean something that's been in there three weeks. I
mean this was just yesterday and Whatever it is the aromas and
tastes that are released when something's cold Different than
when it's warm because you put that in the microwave warm it
up, and it's just as wonderful as it was yesterday And so our
Lord says you know in my mouth when you were hot It was a good
flavor. Now, out you go. I won't have
you. I won't tolerate it. I'm about
to spit you out of my mouth. Now, there is a wonderful, wide
open door of grace and mercy in that word, about. He didn't
say, I am spitting you out. He said, I'm about to. His patience
had not been brought to its end with this congregation. He did not come and simply pronounce
an irrevocable judgment on them. He warned them. He said, I'm
about to. Things can change. Things can be altered. This doesn't
have to happen. But notice now how the Lord describes
their lukewarm attitude. He says, you say I am rich, I
have acquired wealth and do not need a thing, but you do not
realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked. How did this Lukewarmness express
itself in self-righteousness. The problem of the Church of
Laodicea, while the Lord calls it lukewarmness, we might understand
it better if self-righteousness is what it was, and their self-righteousness
is what made them lukewarm. Because they said, I am rich. I have acquired wealth and don't
need a thing. And this is a kind of gospel
self-righteousness. What do we mean by that? He says,
how can you have gospel self-righteousness? Well, it's a doctrinal self-righteousness.
They would say to themselves, well, I have Christ, I have all
that is in Christ, I don't need anything. Well, that's true,
you don't need anything more than Christ, but you continually
need Christ. If I'm a poor man, and have under my name nothing. But I am suddenly connected to
a very wealthy man who provides my needs every day, gives me
everything I need, lets me live in his house, lets me eat at
his table, lets me drive his car, and all that. Okay, did I become a rich man?
I'm a poor man. living the rich life under the
wealth of another man. But that's what these fellows
failed to understand. In Christ, you and I live, if
I can put it this way, spiritually speaking, we're living the high
life in Christ. We have the unsearchable riches
of Christ. We have God's great grace. We
are clothed in the righteousness of Christ. But that didn't make
us rich. We're just poor people living
in the house of the King. David speaks of all the blessings
he has from God in Christ, of course we understand that to
be. And he gets to the end and he says, Yet I am poor and needy,
may the Lord think on me. He gloried. in the riches which
were at his disposal in Christ. And yet, even as he did so, he
recognized that in himself, he's just poor and needy. May the
Lord think on him. Because if the Lord quit thinking
on him, then he would lose all those riches from which he freely
received. Well, they thought here in Laodicea,
they got the idea that because they had believed the gospel,
it is as though they had been made rich, and now they were
sufficient in themselves. They didn't need continual supplies
of Christ and his grace. They didn't need, as the Lord
described the Spirit of God, as waters flowing from within
a person. You see, when we were regenerated
by the Spirit of God. He did not simply fill our wallets
with enough money to get us through life. He took up residence in
us because we were going to need Him all the time. He did not
give us sufficient wood, as it were, to keep the fireplace in
our house going for the rest of our life, but He's continually
handing it, and the moment The moment we think we are sufficient
without Him, the moment we think we got all the wood we need,
the fire starts to go out. You say, I am rich, I have acquired
wealth and do not need a thing. but you do not realize that you
are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked. Who's he saying this to? Professed
believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. Down there, verse 20, where it
says, behold, I stand at the door and knock. That is used
by many evangelists as though the Lord were knocking on each
person's heart's door, asking to enter, and if anybody will
let him in, he'll come in and bring them salvation. In fact,
that particular interpretation of this text of Scripture was
what caused my father to call upon the name of the Lord, which
just shows you the Lord God can even use a faulty application
of Scripture to bring the truth to bear. No, verse 20 is the Lord standing
at the door of a church, wanting in, which is in itself a very
remarkable and sad picture. But he says here, now back up
in verse 18, excuse me, verse 17, he says, you do not realize
that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked. It's
the church he's talking to. You say, well, I thought we were
robed in the righteousness of Christ. We are, if indeed our
hearts are turned towards him. But if we say we are rich, the
Lord may, at least so far as our experience of things is concerned,
withdraw his riches, so we find out how poor we are. If we say,
look how well-dressed I am, I got fine clothes, the Lord may say,
well let me show you what clothes you have. None. If we boast, well I see, the
Lord says, well let's see how well you see without me. See his point here? Wretched,
pitiful, poor, blind, and naked. And brethren, you and I, apart
from Christ are exactly that. And if we can keep that in our
hearts, we will never be lukewarm to Christ. How does a person
become lukewarm to Christ? By forgetting how much he needs
Christ. By thinking that he has all he
needs for the rest of his life, And he can go on without pursuing
Christ, without seeking the Lord. Well, I called on the name of
the Lord on such and such a date and was baptized and everything's
good now till I get to heaven. Really? This business of faith is not
a one-time decision. It is not a once-for-all, in-the-heat-of-the-moment,
emotional outburst, I believe God. It may start out with an
expression like that, but faith is the expression of spiritual
life, and where there's spiritual life, there's faith. And when
there's faith, there is a looking to the Lord Jesus Christ all
the time. Now, we can get distracted. The
Lord never called these people lost, and I'm not gonna call
them lost either. Though they were pretty well acting it, weren't
they? I suppose the way you can tell
the difference or would have been able to discern whether these
people were actually lost or whether they were actually saved
would be this. When they got this letter, what'd they do?
That'd tell the story. And you know what I'll bet happened?
Some of them repented and some of them did not. Why? Because every church in the world's
got sheep and goats in it. And sometimes the goats get the
sheep attracted or distracted and the Lord's got to send a
stern message that gets the goats out of the way and then the sheep
are there in a pure assembly and remember what it is they
had walked away from. So he said, here's my counsel.
They thought they were wise. He said, no, you're not wise.
Let me counsel you. I am the true witness. I am the faithful one, and amen.
What I say is so. Here's my counsel. Buy from me
gold refined in the fire. What is this gold? This gold,
I would say, is probably a reference to faith, because it talks about
it being refined in the fire, and Peter likens faith, or compares
faith, to gold refined in the fire. Actually, he says faith
is much more precious than gold, though it is refined by the fire,
but still we see the likeness of it. This gold is not just
He does not just say the gold of faith, he's talking about
gold that's been refined, faith that's been tried. I know that
we were taught, lead us not into temptation, excuse me, we were
taught to pray, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from
evil. But even as we pray that, we
must understand this, that faith that is untested will be full
of dross and often leads people to this lukewarm involvement
with the Lord Jesus Christ. You say, Lord, revive my heart.
Good, I hope you really want the Lord to revive your heart,
but I want to tell you how he does that quite often. By sending
a fire of trial to refine your faith. By sending trouble your
way that you can't handle. You've heard people say, God
will never give you more than you can handle. Well, if he never
gives you more than you can handle, you'll never trust him. You'll
handle it. If you want to be a child of
God, if you want to live like a child of God, if you want to
learn to believe God with all your heart, this is what God
will do for you. I almost said this is what God
will do to you, but this is actually what God does for His people,
though it often feels like He's doing something to you. He will
send things your way that are beyond your ability, and you
have no choice but to trust Him. And that fire comes, and here's
what it does. It burns the dross out. and all
you're left with is the gold. And you're no longer lukewarm. Even though you wept during the
trial, even though you said, God, why are you doing this to
me? Even though you thought he was
grinding you to powder when it was over. You probably said something
on the line of, it is good for me that I have been afflicted. Who but a believer could ever
look upon afflictions and say, I thank God for that. I was such
a fool before, but he has burned off some of
the foolishness now, and I hope I don't get it back. That's our
problem. We collect dross, don't we? The
Lord keeps burning it out. He says, I counsel you to buy
from me gold refined in the fire so that you can really be rich.
Remember out of the other church, he said, you say you're poor,
but you're rich. He says to these, you say you're
rich, but you're poor. I suggest you buy from me gold
refined in the fire, faith that's been tested and tried and proven
in the face of persecution, in the face of trouble, in conflict. Buy that. And then you'll be
rich. You'll be rich because by faith
you will be strongly connected to Him who has all things at
His disposal. And you will be rich because
the more that faith grows, the less we are concerned with the
way our life goes. Now you think about that. I didn't mean to make a poem,
but that's kind of what happened. The more that faith grows, the
less we are concerned with the way that life goes. Why? Because the more that faith grows,
the more we realize this life is really not our life. This
world is really not our home. The riches here are not our riches.
We look for a better country, an everlasting one. And I counsel you to buy from
me white clothes to wear so you can cover your shameful nakedness. Where can we get white clothes?
From the only one that ever made them, the Lord Jesus Christ. He says, come back to me now.
You've been wrapping yourself again in the rags of your own
perceived righteousness. You've been professing your doctrinal
orthodoxy. as some kind of righteousness
in which you are clothed and protects you from everything
even though you show no real concern for me, well you need
to come back and get you some really white clothes. White clothes
made white in the blood of the Lamb, white clothes of the righteousness
of Christ to cover your shameful nakedness. I imagine everybody has had those
dreams where all at once you're out in public with not enough
clothes, sometimes none at all. Say, I'd never think of doing
that, but in a dream it'll happen to you, you know? And what are
you trying to do immediately? Find something to cover yourself
up with. You're embarrassed. You're humiliated. How many church
people in this world now are running around thinking they're
clothed, but someday they're gonna wake up from that dream
and they're gonna find out their clothing was what was a dream,
not their nakedness. He says, you think you've got
clothes, you don't. You need to get clothes to cover
your shameful nakedness. And you need to get from me some
salve to put on your eyes so you can see. You say, well, can a believer
be blind? Well, he can sure act like a
blind man. At least a professed believer can. He can talk good
talk, but it's obvious these people
could not see things correctly. And he says, so you need to get
some medicine. Now, what is this? I don't know. I don't even know that we have
to assign any particular thing to this. He's just pointing.
We could, you know, get really generalized and say these things
just represent stuff everybody needs and we get it from Christ.
But this could be truth. So I thought the church did have
truth. They had the truth in some doctrinal forms which they
no longer paid attention to. You know, one of the things that
troubles me about many of the churches in this area, and I'll
admit, I'm not intimately involved with them, but by some of the
things I see and some of the things I hear them say, this
is the only conclusion I can come to. They have a pretty good
creed, but it doesn't seem they believe it really. After all, the core doctrines
that you and I believe and find great comfort in and find great
glory in Christ for, it's all to be found in their creeds spelled
out rather nicely. How come then they don't act
like those who understand their continual and perpetual need
for gold refined in the fire, white raiment, and salve for
their eyes so that they can see. The old saying is there are none
so blind as those who say they can see. And that's true. May we forever
use this salve of truth in Christ May we put it upon our eyes,
because one nice thing about this salve, if you can see, it's
not gonna make you blind. It's not gonna hurt you. The
continual application of the gospel to your heart and to your
eyes is not gonna make you blind if you can see, but if you are
blind, it can make you see. Now verse 19, those whom I love,
I rebuke and discipline. That's some pretty tough words.
Thank God he sends us some tough words. We need tough words, why? Because in ourselves we're still
foolish. In ourselves, in our natural selves, we still have
a rebellious way of thinking. In ourselves, we're still self-righteous
and prone to wonder. You know, we sing that, prone
to wonder, Lord, I feel it. Do you believe that about yourself?
Do you honestly see it happen? Can you honestly, or do you honestly,
when you come here on Sundays and you hear that pure gospel
preached again, and you think, man, how far I wandered from
that this week. I can't believe it. Brethren,
I'm the preacher and I feel that. I'm studying during the week
to preach these messages to you and I come up here and preach
them and I think, wow, how far I wandered from that this week. Oh, I love his rebukes and his
discipline, because I'm prone to wonder, and if the Lord Jesus
Christ did not rebuke and discipline me as any loving father does
his children, then I would run wild, and who knows where I would
end up. So be earnest and repent. Repentance
is not a once-for-all thing. We must throughout our lives
throw off that natural way of thinking of self-righteousness
and saying, I'm rich, and I've got it, and I'm well taken care
of for the rest of my life. I got everything I need. No,
we don't have anything we need for the next moment. We've got
enough for what we need right now. And God has promised that
when the next moment comes, we'll have enough need for that. But
it always comes to us through continually looking to him. And then these blessed words,
verse 20, here I am. It's almost as though the Lord
says, here I am, where are you? I remember when I was a young person,
which seems like a long time ago now. But when I was in my
late teens and early 20s, you know, they came out with a lot
of posters. That was the big thing. I mean,
we didn't have the internet, so you actually had to have stuff
that was printed out. And so all these glib religious statements
you see coming across your Facebook page, that sort of thing. We
had posters and we'd put them up on the wall, but a lot of
people did. I didn't because I didn't put
anything on the wall in my bedroom. But I remember one saying this,
and actually I thought it was good. It says, if you feel far
from God, guess who moved? God doesn't move. If you feel
estranged from God, it's not him that moved. Our Lord says,
here I am. Where are you? He's at the door of the church.
He says, I stand at the door and knock. Now, to understand
what he's, the picture he's making here, you've got to understand
those old Palestinian homes. And the nicer ones anyway were
built something like a square donut with a courtyard in the
middle. And then in one of the walls of that square donut was
a hallway to the front door. So if a person wanted in the
house, they'd knock on that door and, generally speaking, a servant
would go to that door. Now the door didn't have a window
in it. It would be a solid wood door.
Why? To keep people out. They didn't
have the safety mechanisms that you and I have in place now with
police and all that. So everyone had to be their own
defense. So houses were kind of like fortresses. So you had
this big wooden door there on big strong hinges and all that,
and somebody would knock and the servant would go to the door
and they'd say, who's there? And the person would answer.
And if the servant recognized the voice of that person, He'd
open the door. An example of that was when Peter
was released from prison, and he went to the home where a bunch
of believers were gathered to pray for him. And he knocked
on the door, and a servant girl came to the door and said, who's
there? And he said, well, it's Peter. Well, she recognized his
voice. Of course, she got so excited
about it, instead of opening the door, she ran back and said,
it's Peter at the door. And his wife said, well, let him in.
Why did he get in? His voice. Now notice this, he
said, I am at the door, I stand at the door and knock, if anyone
hears my voice and opens the door, who hears his voice? Well, let's first ask this, who
does his voice go to? Well, his sheep. He said, my
sheep hear my voice. But he also said this, I have
come to call not the righteous, but sinners to repentance. So
who's gonna hear that voice of a call to repentance? Sinners,
not those who say I am rich, but those who say I am poor. That's who hears the voice of
the Lord. If anyone hears my voice, recognizes
my voice, who will recognize it? The sheep. The sheep recognize
the voice of the shepherd. Now what is His voice? The gospel
of His grace. Some of you, hopefully all of
you, when I preach, you hear that voice. You hear the shepherd call his
sheep. You hear the Savior calling sinners. And you say, He's calling me.
I recognize that voice. And oh, what joy floods the soul
of a child of God when he's made to hear that voice. I, like you, sometimes hear religious
people talk, and we don't recognize right away that the voice of
the serpent is in what they say, and we get brought under a sense
of condemnation. or confused or whatever and then
we sit down where the gospel is preached and the voice of
Christ goes out and we hear it. We hear his voice. David said
in his psalm of repentance, let me hear joy and gladness that
these bones which you have broken may rejoice. He says, if any man hears my
voice and opens, opens the door, and I tell you this, if you hear
his voice and know whose voice it is, you will open the door. People act, you know, that picture
of Christ doing this generally to the world is so insulting
to Christ as though that beloved voice could ever be rejected
if it were truly heard. He speaks. And it's like heaven. That song we sang, the second
one, O thou in whose presence my soul takes delight. And that next to last verse,
it says, he looks and ten thousands of angels rejoice. And myriads,
myriads wait upon his word. He speaks. This voice from the Lord Jesus
Christ sounds gross and rude and crude to the unbelieving
world, but to the believer, even if it finds him in a place of
lukewarmness, if that voice breaks through, it is the very voice
of heaven speaking to him. And he will throw open the door.
And the Lord says, I will come in and eat with him and he with
me. Now, the Pharisees and Sadducees
and all the religious uppity-ups of our Lord's day gave him names
designed not to honor him but to insult him. And you know what
they said? This man eats with sinners and
publicans. Hallelujah. Oh, they sought to insult him
and make him worthless. But I'll tell you, us sinners
and publicans, that's the best news that's ever been written. Who opens the door? The sinners
and the publicans, the poor and the needy, the ones who have
been rebuked about their profession of riches and been made to understand,
indeed, that they are poor and needy and shamefully naked. And He comes in and He eats with
them. and they eat with him. To him
who overcomes, to him who puts down that self-righteous belief
of self-value, says, I'll give the right to sit with me on my
throne, just as I overcame and sat down with my father on his
throne. How did our Lord overcome? Even though, this is what Paul
says in Philippians, even though he was in very nature God, he
didn't consider that glorious position something to cling to,
but he made himself of no reputation. And being found in the likeness
of sinful man, sinful flesh, he became obedient to death,
even the death of the cross. How did Christ overcome? By humbling
himself. He overcame and was seated at
the hands of the Father, and Paul goes on to say this, because
he did all this, because he humbled himself, God exalted him to his
right hand. And the man who humbles himself
is one who's poor, needy, wretched, blind, and naked, and takes from
the Lord his gracious supply for all those things he has overcome. He has overcome. And he will
likewise be exalted to the right hand of Christ, to be with him
forever. He who has an ear, let him hear
what the Spirit says to the churches.