The Experience Community
Revelation - Chapter 3 (C. Trimble 8-11-24)
Good morning, everybody doing okay, guys, good. Okay, all right, so maybe this will make you feel a little bit better. So we understand that it is extremely difficult. We're actually shocked to those of us who work here that you come back so consistently because it is so difficult to get into this place. We have 400 parking spaces and I think we park about 1,000 cars per service. That's not a joke, literally. We park about 120% more cars than we have parking spaces for at this church. So to say thank you on your way out today, make sure you grab one of these. We went over to Seven Brew and we bought 6,000 gift cards so you guys can get a free drink at Seven Brew. And no, it's not much, but they have a drink there called the Beyonce that I really like. This is a true story, this is a true story. I go buy about three times a week and I get a half sweet Beyonce with oat milk. It's fantastic. So you can now go get one of those on your way out today. They'll be giving you these. So make sure you take one, go over to Seven Brew, get yourself a free drink. You don't have to get the Beyonce but it'll change your life. So, all right. It's gonna be hard to take me seriously after that. That's okay, that's okay. Make sure you get one of those on your way out there seriously. It's just our way of saying thank you to you because you guys are so patient with us when it comes to the parking and everything at this church. Okay, so if you haven't been here the last three weeks, this is now our fourth week getting into the book of Revelation we did an introduction and then we did chapters one and two. Today we're gonna be doing chapter three. Now if you were not here last weekend, chapters two and three are unique in a couple of ways. One they're unique in the fact that it is only Jesus speaking. So if you have a Bible that is a red letter Bible which means indicating that Jesus is the one talking, all of chapter two and chapter three is nothing but red letters which makes it interesting in and of itself. The other thing that's interesting about chapters two and three, really chapters one through three is they are kind of the first section. They're kind of an isolated section of the book of Revelation. Chapter one is the introduction, chapter two and three. Jesus is telling John to write seven letters to seven churches that existed in what we would call modern day Turkey. The Bible calls it Asia Minor, okay? That they are to write, John is to listen to what Jesus is saying, write it down and send these letters to these churches. Now these letters that we covered four of them last week will cover the remaining three this week in chapter three. They didn't just work as letters for those specific churches. They work as a template for all Christians and all churches ever since the inception of the Christian faith. So we can go back today in 2024, read chapters two and three and straight from the mouth of Jesus himself, he tells us what he expects and what he doesn't expect out of his church, okay? So that's us is a church and it's us is individuals. Last week as we did chapter two, we focused on this word maturity. It's a very important word, one that a lot of us don't comprehend in modern society today that maturity is very important, especially when it comes to spiritual maturity. Now what we talked about last weekend is how we spiritually mature is we have to listen. Jesus says that a lot in chapters two and three, for those who have ears, listen, we have to listen and not only listen to what Jesus is saying through his word and through his spirit, but respond to that. And that's how we mature, that's how we grow, okay? This week, we're gonna talk about two more very important words. One is evidence, we're gonna basically talk about just very, very briefly that if we claim to be Christians, there should be evidence that supports that claim, right? It's very simple stuff. If I say I'm a follower of Jesus, I should know the direction Jesus is going and I should be walking in that direction. The second word we're going to talk about that we're gonna hang out on quite a bit more today is the word intentionality. That means that we do things on purpose, right? We live in a society nowadays that is very flippant. That's a good word, isn't it? Very, very careless. We don't really take anything serious in our culture anymore. And so we need to think about the fact that we are valuable to God. And if we are valuable to God, we should live our life with purpose, live our life with intention, live our life not accidentally. We're too valuable to live accidentally that we are to live on purpose, okay? That's what we're gonna discuss a little bit today. That's a happy picture, isn't it? So you should've got a notes handout when you walked in. Everything is in there. Everything's on the screen. We're on the last book of the Bible. Now we're gonna break it in three parts. You should've, if you have the experience community app, everything is on there. Everything is also on our website, okay? If you need notes. So let me pray. Let's dive into this. We got a little bit of ground to cover, not as much as last week, but a little bit of ground to cover. I wanna make sure we don't rush it too much. And we'll see where God takes us today. Very, very glad you're here. Very, very glad that you're here in church today. It's important, okay? Let's pray, Father God, we love you. Lord, thank you so much for everyone in the room this morning. I thank you God for this space, Lord, and in this place that we have, God to where we can come, and we can worship, and we can read the word, and we can be with people who are also on a journey, God, and we thank you so much for this. God, I pray this morning that you bless us, Lord, keep your hand on us, God, guide us, direct us, or touch our hearts this morning. If we don't just pray for ourselves, God, we pray for every single church in our city, and we pray for our other campuses, and the churches in those cities, Lord, and we just pray that we are a blessing to you this morning. God, that we are honoring you, Lord, and growing closer to you, Lord, keep your hand on us today. Pray all these things in your son's name, Lord, in Jesus' name, amen. All right, let's read a little bit. Let's go back, we're gonna talk about three more churches today, okay? The first one is the church of Sardis. Jesus says, "Right to the angel of the church in Sardis, thus says the one who has the seven spirits of God and the seven stars. I know your works. You have a reputation for being alive, but you are dead. Be alert and strengthen what remains, which is about to die, for I have not found your works complete before my God." Remember then what you have received and heard, keep it and repent. If you are not alert, I will come like a thief and you have no idea at what hour I will come upon you. But you have a few people in Sardis who have not defiled their clothes and they will walk with me in white because they are worthy. In the same way, the one who conquers will be dressed in white clothes and I will never erase his name from the Book of Life but will acknowledge his name before my father and before his angels. Let anyone who has ears to listen, or anyone who has ears to hear, listen to what the spirit says to the churches. All right, so the first thing that Jesus says to this church is he says, "I am the one that holds the seven spirits "of God and the seven stars." So we talked about this already more than likely, the seven spirits that Jesus is referring to here goes back to the Old Testament to Isaiah chapter 11. If you go back to Isaiah chapter 11, it kind of lists the characteristics of the Holy Spirit of God and we can use that and it kind of fills in that blank in Revelation chapter one, it mentions it and in chapter three. The seven stars are the churches, okay? Jesus makes that clear also in chapter one. The seven stars that we're talking about are these seven churches that John is gonna write these letters to. Now this number seven, we gotta be careful with numbers a little bit when it comes to the Bible, when it comes to Revelation. Some people get a little squirrely when it comes to numbers. It's called gematria, by the way. They start getting into codes and trying to add this and multiply this and divide this. And look, if you put all this together, you know, this happens and that's not what the Bible's about, but there are significant numbers in the Bible and the number seven is one of those. As we work through the book of Revelation, we will see that the number seven holds relevance and seven typically symbolizes completion or balance or perfection. If you even think about laying seven things out on a table, three on one side, three on the other, one in the center that balances everything, that's kind of what seven represents. So you'll see this come up periodically through the book of Revelation. Another thing that you may have not noticed, and quite honestly, I didn't notice that the first couple of times I taught Revelation, but I noticed that this time around, I noticed that Jesus refers to God the Father in two different places in this chapter as my God. Now, what is interesting about that is if we're not careful, if one were to read that without having a little bit more knowledge of the nature of God and I'll say, the construction of God, you could get confused and think that Jesus is less than God the Father. And Jesus is not less than God the Father. Jesus is God, the Father is God, the Spirit is God. And now that gets a little confusing, and I'm gonna go ahead and tell you, like it's okay to be confused about it because no human has figured it out yet. It brings out the conversation of the Holy Trinity, that the God we worship is one God, manifested in three people that have unique roles. And again, if you're like, I don't get it, you're not alone. I don't think anyone truly gets it. And there's actually a little bit of beauty in the mystery of the Holy Trinity. The beauty is this, and we'll get into this a little bit when we get into chapter four. I think there is something majestic and wonderful and exciting about the fact that we are the creation. He is the Creator, and I believe for all eternity, we will always be learning more about God. I don't know if the plan is to ever have God truly figured out. We'll see this in Revelation chapter four with the angels that circle the throne, that they are constantly discovering new things about their Creator, and that's one of the exciting things about our eternity, right? They were always growing, always learning, always knowing more about Him. So, now when it pertains to this church, the church and Sardis isn't doing very well. They look like they're doing well, but according to God, they're not doing very well. They get no approval. Jesus gets right to the criticism. The main accusation against this church is that they look healthy, but they're not. They're actually dead, so their reputation is deceiving. They fool everyone into thinking they're alive, but Jesus says you're dead. What does that mean? That means that this was a group of people who say that they're Christians, but they're Christian in name only. They actually don't do anything that the Bible tells them to do, or live in the way that Jesus wants them to live. They just tell everyone that they're Christians. Now, I'm not trying to pick on where we live, right? The United States, but here we are. About 65% of the United States claims to be followers of Jesus. Now, I don't think our culture reflects a 65% majority that we adhere to the teachings of the Bible. Anyone want to push back on that? Nobody. I didn't think so. So when you go out in the society, there's a lot of people who say I'm a Christian, and in no way follow the principles of that book. That's what was happening in Sardis. And so Jesus tells them, wake up, wake up, be alert, strengthen what little bit of passion you have left. He says your works are not complete yet. You need to ask for repentance. You need to change the way you're thinking and acting and turn away from those things. So what we learn is this. To say we have faith or to say that we are a follower of Christ is more than just having an understanding of who Jesus is. It's more than just accepting the identity of Jesus. How do you say that, Corey? How can you dare say that? In the book of James, it says every devil in hell knows who Jesus is. They even know that he's the savior of mankind. The knowledge of who Jesus is does not save us. It is putting that knowledge into action and living according to the word of God. And even later on in this chapter, Jesus says I knock on the door. Just knowing that Jesus knocks on the door does not save you. It is opening the door and letting Jesus in. There has to be some action to that knowledge. Well, I know who Jesus is. Great, I know who Elon Musk is. I don't have a relationship with him. I don't even drive a Tesla, right? Can't afford it. But just by knowing who he is doesn't mean that we know each other, just by knowing who Jesus is doesn't mean I have a relationship with him. So here's the other odd thing about Sardis. This is a church that wasn't even being persecuted. There's no persecution. So the church in Smyrna that we talked about last week, it was very much praised by Jesus and they were being heavily persecuted and they were poor. They were poor and persecuted and Jesus praises them. The church in Sardis was very, very wealthy. Sardis was a very, very wealthy area. It was a very, very wealthy area. They had lots of freedom. They had lots of prosperity. They had lots of information at their disposal. It was very easy to be a Christian there. But what happens is this, see if this sounds familiar. When people are not already connected to Jesus and they're given prosperity and freedom, they don't use that as a means to be more appreciative and grow closer to the one that gave them those freedoms. They actually turn apathetic and lazy and entitled. And so Jesus threatened this church, right? And this affluent, very comfortable place that I'm gonna come like a thief. And this is not referring to the second coming of Jesus. This is Jesus saying to that church in particular, if you don't take this, what I'm saying to heart, I'm gonna come in, you're not even gonna know what I'm gonna come in, I'm gonna stop your earthly blessings. All of those blessings and freedoms and prosperity that you've taken for granted, Jesus says, I'm gonna take those things from you. Again, I hope we're listening this morning. So what the Bible does is the Bible calls us to righteous living. That means that our faith is not sporadic. Our faith is not something that we just do periodically or when we get bored or when we need something from God. Our faith is supposed to be consistent. It's supposed to be present in our day-to-day lives. So oftentimes we say things like, "Well, I'm gonna go to church and worship." Well, worship is more than coming into this place and singing some songs with other Christians. Worship is how we work Monday through Friday. Worship is how we raise our children. Worship is how we treat our neighbors. Worship is our thoughts and our actions that hopefully honor God. True faith is not us being perfect, but true faith is us being active. It is being on the clock. It doesn't go on and off. I can't compartmentalize my Christianity. I can't stick it over here, right? Christianity is supposed to permeate through everything that we do. It is consistent. So Jesus looks at this church and he doesn't have anything good to say about him, but he does say there are a couple of good ones still in there. There's a couple that are not apathetic. They're not entitled. And Jesus assures those, if you'll just continue to conquer evil, if you'll continue to conquer the apathy that it is very tempting to fall into, Jesus says, "I'll never erase your name from the book of life." And what we learn from that is this. Endurance is one of those markers of a true Christian. A true Christian will endure. And endurance only comes when we depend on Jesus, right? So we have to depend on him. We have to build a relationship with him. And as we do that, we are given the strength by him to endure, right? It's rocky, Philadelphia, all right? Everyone gets it. If you're under 40, you're like, what is that? Is that John? Is that Jesus? (congregation laughing) It's Rocky Balboa. Right to the angel of the church in Philadelphia, thus says the holy one, the true one, the one who has the key of David, who opens and no one will close and who closes and no one opens. I know your works. Look, I have placed before you an open door that no one can close because you have but little power, yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name. Note this. I will make those from the synagogue of Satan who claim to be Jews and are not but are lying. I will make them come and bow down at your feet and they will know that I have loved you. Because you have kept my command to endure, I will also keep you from the hour of testing that is going to come on the whole world to test those who live on the earth. I am coming soon, hold on to what you have so that no one takes your crown. The one who conquers, I will make a pillar in the temple of my God and he will never go out again and I will write on him the name of my God and the name of the city of my God, the New Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from my God and my new name. Let anyone who has ears to hear listen to what the spirit says to the churches. So this church, the first thing Jesus says to the church in Philadelphia is he says about himself that I am the one that holds the keys or the key of David. If you've been in church for any length of time, kind of a Christian colloquialism that we often say in churches, we say, hey, let's pray for God to open the door. Or let's pray for God to close the doors that he doesn't want us to go through. Now, where we get that terminology and most people don't even know where we get that terminology, where that comes from is Isaiah chapter 22, that God is the one that opens doors and God is the one that closes doors. Now, the church in Philadelphia was a small church, which meant within the city of Philadelphia, they didn't have a lot of power, they didn't have a lot of influence, they didn't have a lot of ability to oppose maybe corruption and evil around them. But this church, though they were small, though they were persecuted, they stayed close to Jesus and because they put their hope in Jesus, even though they weren't big dogs in the community, they were able to endure whatever obstacles came their way. So Jesus assures them that he has placed a door in front of them that no one can close. Why? Because they've been faithful to the word and because they have not denied his name, even though they were being treated poorly. I need everyone in this room to let that soak in a little bit. It didn't matter that culture was persecuting them and ostracizing them and making fun of them, they did not turn their back on the word and they did not turn their back on the name of Jesus Christ. So the door that Jesus was going to open for them could mean one of two things, or it could kind of mean a little bit of both. What I think it probably means is he's talking about the door of their salvation. I'm gonna open up the door of salvation and no one's gonna be able to shut that on you. The other thing that it could mean is that Jesus was going to open up opportunity for them. What I mean by opportunity, influence in their city, the ability to be able to disciple and baptize and teach more people that he was gonna open up those doors and no one's gonna be able to stop them. So it could mean a little bit of both, but more than likely more the second thing, right? Salvation. Also, we see Jesus talk pretty sternly about the synagogue of Satan. This is the second time that Jesus has referred to this group of Jewish leaders at a synagogue and an area. And I find it very interesting what Jesus says. He says they claim to be Jews, but they're not. Now, how can they not be Jews? So they were Jews by birth, they were Jews by blood, but they were not acting like Jewish people in the sense that they were not acting like the chosen people of God. They were persecuting believers, right, of Christians. And so Jesus is essentially saying you're not acting like the people of God, you're acting like the devil. He calls them the synagogue of Satan. So again, here's what's interesting. Similar to Smyrna, there is no accusation against the church of Philadelphia. Jesus couldn't find anything wrong with this church, yet they were still being persecuted. I said this last week, if you ever talk to somebody and they're into the prosperity gospel, if you've never heard of the prosperity gospel, that's okay, it's crap. So if anyone ever talks to you about the prosperity gospel, that if you go to church, all your problems are gonna be solved, everything's going to be easy, God's gonna bless you financially. I think God takes care of us, but you're gonna get rich and never have to worry about anything. All you have to go is go to Revelation chapter two and three and you completely debunk that. Two of the seven churches that Jesus praises more than any other church of the seven were the poorest and the most persecuted. And so what we're reminded of is this, that allegiance to Jesus is not a get-out-of-hard times-free pass. I would even make the argument, and I think Jesus would even make the argument throughout the gospels that allegiance to Him will actually bring some hardship on you, bring some opposition against you, right? Because people hate Christ and people hate people who carry the name of Christ. So we even bring some of that hardship on us. So Jesus says this, because of their endurance, Jesus says I'm gonna open up the door that no one can close, more than likely salvation, that the Jews are going to bow down at your feet, that's more than likely a reference and probably Philippians chapter two, every knee shall bow. And then he says something that people debate and have debated for a long time. He says I'm gonna keep you from the hour of testing. Now, what does that mean? This is the first reference in Revelation to what we call the great tribulation. The tribulation is seven years. So the majority of Revelation that we're gonna study takes place within a seven year span, okay? That's the tribulation. The great tribulation is the second half of that. Three and a half years of extreme things happening in the universe, on earth, spiritually, a lot of crazy stuff happening. And that's going to be initiated by God. And Jesus looks at the church of Philadelphia and he says you're not gonna have to suffer through that awful time. And then this is where people start to diverge. Does this mean that we're all gonna be raptured out before the seven years and we're not gonna have to deal with any of it or does that mean that we'll go through it but we will not suffer the wrath of God? And like I said, this is where I hope we can agree to disagree. This may fix the parking problem. You may have more parking spaces next week after we talk about this. I'm gonna go ahead and tell you where I land. I'm gonna tell you where I land in the hopes that you will trust me that I will still teach this book of the Bible objectively. I land in the camp of what they call post-tribulation pre-rath. What that means is I believe Christians go through the seven years. I believe we do not suffer the wrath of God because God said we would never suffer the wrath of God of our believers. So we will escape his wrath but we will go through the tribulation. Now that is a very divisive topic. It's a minor by the way. I hope if you're a pre-tribulation, you don't think we go through any of it? I hope you're right and I'm wrong. That's what I always tell people. I'd rather not go through it. I think for me personally, one of the problems I have with us escaping any kind of testing beside the fact that Jesus refers to it a lot throughout Revelation. I think the other problem I have with that is the heart of Jesus and the Gospels was not that his followers be removed from a dark world but they be protected so they can go in and permeate the dark world. John 17, I'm not praying that you take them out of this world, Jesus is saying to God, but that you just protect them while they're in it. I get confused with who is going to minister the gospel to the people who were left if we're all zapped out. And so this is where I have this struggle. And again, I promise you, I will teach the book of Revelation objectively, but just for the sake of transparency and honesty, this is where I land personally in that camp. So if Philadelphia will stay strong, Jesus says no one will be able to take your crown. God also promises them or Jesus promises them that they will have a pillar in heaven. The pillar is symbolic for they will have permanency. They're gonna be there forever, right? You're gonna have security with God forever. Here's the other neat thing, Jesus alludes to this. He says that heaven will come down or that the city will come down out of heaven. Heaven, what he means there is the universe, the heavens. So what's going to happen is at the end of Revelation, we'll get to it in several months from now, Jesus is going to wipe out the old heavens. That's the universe, the old earth. He's gonna get rid of that. He's gonna create a new heavens, a new earth. And we have a misconception. A lot of people say we're gonna go up to heaven. We're not gonna go up to heaven. Heaven's gonna come down. Jesus just referred to it there and we're gonna see it at the end of Revelation. New universe, new earth. And it says the new Jerusalem, the city that we're going to reside in forever, right if we're Christians, comes down and rests on the earth. And then it says the gates are open and we inherit our eternity. So one of those neat things whenever people are like, "Well, we're gonna go up." Man, it's actually gonna come down. So fun stuff. Post tribulation, he thinks we, you know, heaven comes down out of here, right? Now my parking space. Okay, last part. Right to the angel of the church in Laodiceia, thus says the amen, the faithful and true witness, the originator of God's creation. I know your works that you're in either cold nor hot. I wish that you were cold or hot. So because you are lukewarm and neither hot nor cold, I'm going to vomit you out of my mouth. For you say I'm rich, I have become wealthy and need nothing. And you don't realize that you're wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked. I advise you to buy from me gold refined in the fire so that you may be rich, white clothes, so that you may be dressed and your shameful nakedness not exposed, an ointment to spread on your eyes so that you may see. As many as I love, I rebuke and discipline. So be zealous and repent. See, I stand at the door and knock if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him and he with me. To the one who conquers, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I have also conquered and sat down with my father on his throne. Let anyone who has ears to hear, listen to what the spirit says to the churches. Now this is probably the most famous of the seven churches. A lot of churches have used this. We'll talk about that here in a second and kind of used it, I would dare say, a little inappropriately in what it means. So Laodicea was reminded by Jesus that he is the true witness, why? He reminded them of that because they are not being a good witness. Their reputation was faulty. Jesus also says that he is the originator of all creation, just a little side note, by saying that he is the originator of God's creation. What we see there is we talked about the Trinity, right? Three persons is one God with different roles, unique roles. What it appears like there was Jesus, the one who was the archetype, the originator, he says, of all of creation. So when the universe was created, right? I think it's in Colossians where it says all things were created through him, by him, for him, we see that Jesus was the one that kind of pulled the trigger, if you will, on all of creation. Now one of the most misunderstood passages in Revelation, especially in the first three chapters, is about the Laodacian church. And people always talk about being lukewarm, right? They're not cold, they're not hot, they're lukewarm, and that's probably taken a little out of context. So the first thing is this. This church gets no compliment, not good. Their criticism is only this. Jesus says you're lukewarm. Now this reference to temperature is referring to the state of their faith, but maybe not in the way that we think it is. What a lot of churches will say is, I've heard Christians say this, Jesus would rather you be a stone cold atheist than a lukewarm Christian. Now that's not what the text is saying right here. So Laodacia geographically fell between two very interesting spots. In the north, you had an area called Aeropolis that was known for its hot springs. If you've ever been to a hot spring, right? Hot springs are very medicinal in their properties. There's medicinal hot springs, you go. It is very, very good for the body, very, very conscientious of your health when people would soak in those things, very, very good for them. To the south of Laodacia was Colossae, which was known for its pure cold, ice cold springs of water. It was also very, very good. It was pure, it was healthy, some of the best water that you could drink in that area. So this reference of them not being hot or cold is not about them being on fire for Jesus or an ice cold atheist. What that's referring to is, talking about coffee this morning, right? Think of coffee, think when you go get your be on safe at seven brew, they're gonna say do you want it iced or do you want it hot? Either way is fine. What Jesus is more than likely referring to here, you're not hot or cold. It's not that cold is bad and hot is good. Hot, this is one way for you to minister. You can go minister this way and you can reach out to your neighbors this way, you can serve at a soup kitchen. You can grow in your personal relationship with Jesus by maybe meditating, by going out into the woods and being alone by yourself and being quiet, or maybe that's not your way of doing it. Maybe you would rather do it this way where your thing is maybe you journal and you write things down and you keep up with things like that and maybe your ministry is singing up here or playing an instrument and maybe that's way, your way of doing it. What Jesus is saying is you're not doing it this way, you're not doing it this way, you're doing nothing at all. You're somewhere in the middle, you're sitting still. You're not being a cold spring, you're not being a hot spring, you're just doing nothing. You're right in the middle and doing nothing is not the way that Christians are to live. Now, you may not like to sit out in the woods by yourself and meditate on the things of God. You may not like to journal, but here's the thing, you have to do something because there is no neutral. We're either progressing in our faith or we're regressing. There is no pause. There is no just sitting there doing nothing. That is not the way that Christians are supposed to live. And so Jesus uses very graphic imagery about vomiting. And the reason he uses this graphic imagery about vomiting is in essence, spiritual apathy doing nothing makes Jesus sick to his stomach. And so the apathy is derived from self-righteousness. How do we know that? Because Jesus says, he goes, look, you guys have, you think you got everything you need. They say you're rich, that you're wealthy, you need nothing. And Jesus says, but you don't realize you're actually wretched and pitiful and poor and blind. And naked, you think you have everything you need, but you don't, you're actually in really, really rough shape. And now what we do in this room, maybe not you, but I'm sure someone does, is we point at the rich people in our society and we go, that's right, Corey, get those rich people. They think they have it all, but they don't have anything. And what we do is we fall to the same kind of sin. We slide into the same kind of self-righteousness and self-sufficiency. Because what we do, regardless of your income, regardless of how you dress, regardless of where you're from, culture has sold us a big batch of lies. The first big batch of lie that culture has sold you is, you're fine just the way you are. You're not. How dare you. Listen, if we were fine just the way we are, there would be no need of someone saving us. If we were fine just the way we were, there would be no need for Jesus. There would be no need for God. The bottom line of Christianity is realizing I need help. I can't do this by myself. I'm gonna tell you the most liberating thing about Christianity. The most liberating thing about Christianity is the recognition that I can't do it alone. And that's beautiful. I'm gonna tell you, that's the most liberating thing you'll ever hear, because when we start to accept the fact that we can't do it by ourselves, that we need Christ to do it, it takes all the pressure off us and it puts it on him. And he's capable of handling that pressure. He's capable of doing it. And so we need to get off our self-righteousness, right? This idea that I'm fine just the way I am, right? You're not. The other thing that we hear all the time is follow your heart. Horrible advice. If you follow your heart, you're gonna end up cheating on your wife. If you follow your wife, your heart, you're gonna end up, you can follow your wife, that's good. If you follow your heart, you're gonna end up spending money that you don't have. If you follow your heart, you're gonna end up in jail, right? If I followed my heart, I would have already run someone in Murfreesboro off an embankment while I'm driving around this time, right? Hey, listen, if you ever just wanna make me mad, tailgate me. Just do that. I'm a pretty calm, patient, cool driver. I like to drive, I like old cars, all that kind of stuff. But man, if you just wanna make me mad, just if I can't see your headlights, like bad thoughts run through my brain, right? And if I followed my heart, I would have slammed my brakes on, right? I would have let you go past and then get on you, right? But you can't do that. We're not meant to follow our hearts, just venting a little bit. We're not meant to follow our hearts, we're meant to follow the Holy Spirit that should reside in our heart. That's why, because listen, Corey, why should we not follow our heart? Because the Bible says in Jeremiah, it's the most deceptive part about you. It will lie to you. Your feelings will deceive you and your feelings will lie to you. Just follow your feelings. Do not do that. Do not do that. The reason why is this, the Bible says in multiple times, there is nothing good in us apart from God. Nothing good in us apart from God. And so our self-righteousness, this idea of, well, that's your truth, but here's my truth. There is no your truth and my truth. There's just truth. Listen, I don't care when anyone tells you, two and two is always going to equal four, right? People are like, well, that's not my truth. I don't care. Truth is truth. I don't have a monopoly on truth, nor do you. And what that's going to do is it creates a culture, this self-righteousness, that we can all set our different standards of what it means to be good. And what that does is creates utter chaos. Have you not seen it in your society? Have you not seen what moral relativism is done to your society? It's made us a lunatics. It's made us absolutely out of our minds. And so Jesus says this, He says a couple of things. By gold refined through my fire, by clothes that are clean, right? He's talking about, you know, put on the things of God. The other thing that He says is very, very interesting. This He says, put this ointment and spread it on your eyes. Laodicea was an area that was globally known for a salve that you would put on your eyes. And so Jesus is playing a little bit on their culture. And He says, it's ironic. You're in a city that is known for its eye health, but you can't spiritually see. And so Jesus recommended that they apply the Holy Spirit so they can actually see. So they can use their spiritual eyes. Jesus also tells them why He's being so hard on them. I'm sure the church in Laodicea is like, man, Jesus is really hammering us pretty hard here. And Jesus says, well, as many as I love, I discipline. I discipline you because I love you. Jesus says that in the gospel of John as well. And we often mistake the correction of God for the punishment of God, and it's not the same. He is correcting us, He is discipline us because that's what a good dad does. You wanna know the worst thing that's ever happened to me in my life and listen, I'm not trying to be a jerk here this morning. The worst thing that ever happened to me in my life is I grew up without the discipline of my father. I'm talking about my earthly father. We have no relationship. He disowned me when I was 17 years old. And so I have no relationship with my father and I haven't for a long time. And when I was younger and when it was just the two of us in the house, I had no rules. I could do whatever I wanted to do. He would say, just don't wreck the house. He'd be gone for weeks at a time. I basically raised myself. So worst thing that ever happened to me. The reason why that was the worst thing that ever happened to me is if one truly loves their children and they see them driving in a way that is destructive, they discipline them, they correct them, they do whatever they have to do to get them off that destructive path and onto a healthy path. So parents, I love you in here. You've been given the biggest responsibility that a human can ever have. Raise your children with intentionality and discipline. Why? 'Cause that's how we love them. That's how we love them correctly, intentionality and discipline. Jesus also tells them to be zealous and repent. He advises them to turn away from their self-righteousness, turn away from their apathy. And he says, look, I'm standing at the door and I'm knocking. But what does he also say? We have to get up and we have to open up the door and let him in and he'll come in and he'll eat with us. And so if we'll be humble, if we'll build that relationship with Jesus, not only do we become passionate about Jesus, we become passionate about the things of Jesus. Things that honor him, right? Things that bring more attention to him, we start to feel passionate about those things. And then something really interesting that Jesus says is, then you'll have the right to sit with me on my throne. Little things that we miss it. So what we do is in Romans chapter eight, Paul says that we become co-heirs with Christ. I talk about this a lot because I think it's really, really important. It's not that we are just going to go to heaven and just hang out in Jesus' kingdom. What we find out through Romans and then Jesus is gonna spell it all out for us in Revelation chapter 21 is that when he creates the new universe, the new earth, it says the gates of the city that comes down that it's gonna be open. Which gives us the illusion that we're gonna be able to journey out of the New Jerusalem. Though we're gonna be able to explore a new earth, maybe explore a new universe and not just explore it, we have the right to do that because Jesus is basically saying right here, it's yours. You have inherited this. God loves us so much that we don't get to just be in his kingdom. We become like like shareholders in his kingdom. We become part owners of the kingdom. Bible says co-heirs with him. He welcomes us in and goes, all right, we have a lot of time to spend with each other, right? It's all yours, go explore, go look around, go check it all out. Here's your residency and that we get this and that is a very beautiful thing. Now to get there though, we can't be spiritually dead. Even if we look the part, we have to make sure that we're spiritually alive. Now here's the thing about life. Life must be defined by the word of God, spiritual life, not by modern society's definition of it. What I mean by that is this. A lot of you will probably get on your Instagram, you might even follow some of these churches, right? You get on there and there's a church with a lot of followers on their social media and they got a really charismatic, cool, pasturing great music in this really big building and like they're really stylish and they're in a cool city and all this stuff and we look at that and we think that is success, right? Now listen, size and a charismatic, that's all fine. But we put this kind of like Christian culture view of success on that. And if you go back to chapters two and three of Revelation, it wasn't the big flashy, cool, hip, you know, like we got everything together in the lasers and that's not the churches that were celebrated. It was the ones that were poor, the ones that were persecuted, the ones that were in the ditch, right? Doing everything they can to honor Christ and to love other people. So we have to make sure that the success of church is not defined by what's cool in Christian culture, but what is honored or what is spoken highly of by Jesus himself, that's what needs to define what a healthy church is. Now that's on a macro level, on a micro level, that's us. If I'm gonna claim to be a Christian, that means I have to know the direction and be following the lead of Jesus. So if I'm gonna claim to be a Christian, I can wear the right shirt, I can walk around with my Bible, I can put the right phrases on my social media, I can get the bumper sticker, I can do all the stuff, I can look the part, I can make everyone think I am alive. And I can be spiritually dead as a doornail. If we claim Christ, we must believe in the identity of Christ, yes, the word of God, we must display the fruit of the Spirit of God, and we must be obedient to God. And if we're not those things, we can trick other people. But Jesus sees if we're spiritually alive or not. Now, Laodicea wasn't dead, but they were dying. And so there's many different ways that we can grow in our relationship with God and grow in our relationship with others. Like I said earlier, some people might want a journal, I'm not a journal, but maybe you're into journaling, and that grows you closer to God and helps you. Maybe some people want to be quiet and go for a long drive and just sit in silence. And that's a way that they kind of connect and meditate on the things of God, that's fine. It's okay to do it that way, it's okay to do it this way. If you want to reach the city by serving it journey home and working with the homeless, that's great. Or if you want to serve your city by working in the marketplace, and maybe you're dealing with people who run big businesses in your ministry, that's fine, they're different, but it's doing something. What we can't do though, is nothing. We can't not do anything and expect for the things of God to be perpetuated throughout our city. You guys hear me, right? If we just sit around and go, well, I hope everyone gets saved. Well, unless someone goes out and builds relationships, no one's gonna get saved. Unless someone starts doing the work of the Lord out in the community, nothing's going, well, man, I hope my kids grow up loving Jesus. What are you gonna do about it? Are you reading the word to him? Are you praying with him? Are you getting him involved in the church? Are you intentionally doing something? Doing nothing's not gonna do anything for them. Do something. You don't have to do it exactly how I do it, but do something, do something. Leo Desiio is just sitting around doing nothing. And that's not what Christians are designed to do. We are designed to evolve, right? I know people get afraid of that word, but it's not a scary word. We are called to evolve. What that means is this. If you are born again, that means you genuinely give your life to Jesus Christ. We are born again. That gives us the impression of a baby, right? A newborn. Now, if 14 years have gone by and that newborn has not grown at all, something is wrong. It's the same thing in the spiritual world. If you got saved 10 years ago, but your faith is still in an infantile stage, something's wrong. You should have evolved past that. You should have evolved and grown into spiritual adulthood, right? And even spiritual parenthood. What I mean by that is there should come a time where Christians produce more Christians. It's called the discipleship that we make more. It's one of the, it's the great commission of Christ. Teach baptized, make more disciples. Do we are to be evolving? And if we're not, we're just going to be dying. We're going to die out, right? This means that we grow in our love. We grow in our knowledge. We grow in our action, where we're just sitting still and we're going to get rebuked, just like Laodiceia got rebuked. The other church is one that is alive. This is the church of Philadelphia. Now, my wife has degrees in biology and chemistry, zoology and chemistry to be exact. And if you were to ask my wife, Alicia, how is life sustained over a long period of time? It's simple. There has to be nourishment, food. It has to be in a healthy environment that will sustain it. And then it eventually has to reproduce if life is going to continue on for a long period of time. So nourishment, environment, reproduction. So, Philadelphia possessed life. Not only were they alive spiritually, there were, God was opening up doors for them. Their salvation and for things to happen in their city. Why? Because they endured in their relationship with Jesus. How did they have life in Jesus? How did they endure in that? Going back to the definition of how one sustains life. It came from the consumption of the word, right? Nourishment. It came from community, environment. And it came from reproduction, discipleship. And this is how the church remains alive and keeps on going. Consumption of the word, community, discipleship. And so to do these things, though, this is my last slide. The key to truly living, though, takes intentionality and it takes sacrifice. And it takes the desire to want to grow. Which means we need to be humble. We lack this sorely in our culture. Humility, humility. We're the most arrogant lot that has probably ever lived. We're the society, we're the culture right now that is so arrogant to believe if I record myself like buying a can of chicken noodle soup, I wouldn't buy chicken noodle soup. I don't eat chickens. But if I were to buy vegetarian soup, right? Like vegetable soup. If I were to do that, and I'm gonna sit there and hold my phone, hey, look, buying soup at Kroger, we are so narcissistic and so arrogant that we think people care. I'm not trying to be mean to you today. When did we take such a turn? Once upon a time, people used to take their family to the theater to watch a four hour film. Now we are entertained by people buying vegetable soup. Because our lives, listen, I'm not trying to be mean, because our lives are so depleted right now that even the most insignificant things turn us on. And we have lost something. We have become so self-centered. We don't even look for truth anymore. We make it up. This is my truth. We don't seek knowledge. We think we know everything. We're not obedient to God because what is God? I am God. We don't live in repentance because nothing, we are not ashamed of anything anymore. We are a tacky society, aren't we? And this is not how we're supposed to be. Our faith is supposed to be put into action. If we're going to have life. Now listen, I sounded like I was just beating everybody up pretty bad about there, pretty bad right there. But here's why. You and I, I've said this a thousand times in the last 15 years, but I'm gonna keep saying it. You and I, listen to me. You and I are the only things in the universe that look like God. We are the only things made in the image of God. You are the only thing, biblically speaking, that has been breathed the breath of God in you. You are the only things that are recipients of the Holy Spirit of God. Do you know what that means? That means that you are very, very special. Very special. You carry the image of God. Now here's what I want you to hear this morning. I need you to hear this this morning. That if I carry the image of God, my life is not to be carried out accidentally. I'm too valuable for that. I look like my father. My life is too important to be lived haphazardly, to be lived so flippantly. I mean, he synonyms I have to use, but how foolishly we are. Bill Maher and atheist, right? Bill Maher said this. He said we have become a silly people. He hit the nail right on the head. We are a silly people. Christians, your life, the life you have been given. I hope you all understand, we get one shot, one shot, and we are becoming even Christians. We are becoming the generation. I said it last weekend, we're gonna TikTok dance our way off a cliff. The average adult spends six hours a day on that phone that you're holding. Well, Corey, I don't have time. You have time, you just don't have priority. Hold on, no, no, no, seriously, listen to me. I'm saying all this to say this. You're better than that. You're more important than that. You are more, you are more special to God than to waste your life making stupid videos. You're more important to God than to waste your life drowning in porn at three o'clock in the morning. You're more important to God than to burn your best years out trying to make so much money so you can just impress these people that honestly really don't care that much about you. You're more important than that. But so many people are living their lives completely accidental. And God the Father didn't allow his only son to be sacrificed on a piece of wood so we can walk around living superfluous lives. That's not why he did that. He did that because we carry his image. I hope someone in this room listens to me. I hope someone in this room realizes we are way too important to pardon my language, piss this time away. We are too important, okay? Would you buy your heads with me, please?