Doing Everything Right but Still Empty? | Seven Letters | Week 7

of Ephesus and a few miles north of Colossae, the city of Laodicea was an important trade center in the first century and home to one of the great medical schools of the ancient world. The city was known throughout the world for its wealth. About 30 years before Revelation, the city was destroyed and the Roman Emperor offered to rebuild it, but the citizens refused. Instead, they financed the construction using their own wealth rather than rely on assistance from the state. While Laodicea was extremely wealthy, it had no natural water supply. Water for the city was brought in through pipes from a hot spring six miles away. By the time water arrived in the city, it was lukewarm, stale, and tepid. In his letter to the Laodicean Christians, Jesus rebukes their lukewarm faith and points out their prideful self-sufficiency. The believers in this city are in danger of losing sight of what's really valuable, not wealth or riches, but humble reliance on God and his goodness. This is Jesus's letter to the church in Laodicea. All right, Flatiron, so good to be together today as we wrap up our series Seven Letters. How have you guys been enjoying just going back to our roots, standing for the reading of God's Word at the beginning of the services, just showing a little bit of honor and reverence for God's Word? And so we're gonna do that for the seventh week right now. I want to invite you to stand up. If you got your Bibles, you can open up to Revelation chapter 3 verse 14, and we're just gonna stand as we read God's Word together. Revelation chapter 3 verse 14. And to the angel of the church in Laodicea write, the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of God's creation. I know your works. You are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot. So because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, but not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire so that you may be rich, white garments so that you may clothe yourself, and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen, and salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see. Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be

zealous and repent. Behold, I stand at the door and knock, and if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me. The one who conquers, I will grant him to sit with me on my throne, as I also conquered and sat down with my father on his throne. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. This is the word of the Lord. You may have a seat. So we spent the last seven weeks walking through seven letters from Jesus to seven ancient churches. And these churches, they're in real cities, and they sit along the same trade road in Asia Minor. And so if you've been with us for all seven weeks or you've caught up online, you've kind of felt this arc of the letters, where at the beginning you got Ephesus, and Ephesus is this church, they're doing everything right, they're doing all the right things, except they're not loving Jesus the way that they did at first. And then Smyrna is a church under serious pressure, but they're staying faithful anyways. Pergamum is this church, they're holding the line publicly, but at the same time, they're letting culture in the back door. Thyatira, they're a church they called Compromise Tolerance, and that tolerance and compromise, it costs them everything. Then you got Sardis, Sardis is a church, great reputation on the outside, but Sardis was actually decaying and dying on the inside. And then last week, Carl taught us about Philadelphia, small church, not a lot of power, but they stayed faithful to the end. And today, we're going to cover the church in Laodicea, and this might be the most dangerous letter of them all. This one is probably going to hit at us, it's going to come at us, because this church, it's not persecuted, it's not under attack. This is a church that is kind of like, hey, everything's fine, we're fine, everything's fine. And so in verse 14, we see how Jesus starts this letter, and he says this. He says, and to the angel of the church in Laodicea, write the words of the amen, the... faithful and true witness the beginning of God's creation. And so Jesus is saying, hey, I'm the beginning, I'm faithful, I'm true, you can trust me.

But then he calls himself the amen. What does it mean when Jesus is saying, hey, I'm the amen? This means that Jesus gets the final word. He said, I'm the amen, I get the final word. So the diagnosis is not the final word. The relapse is not the final word. The email that laid you off is not the final word. Jesus gets the final word, Jesus is the final word. And so what he's saying here, he's saying, whatever you're walking through, hey, I've got this, I'm the amen, I get the final word on this. And then he goes from there to pointing his attention to the church. And just like Sardis, if you remember the church in Sardis, this is the other church, the only other church where Jesus doesn't have any commendation to start, he doesn't have anything good to say about him. And this would actually surprise the people of Laodicea because these people thought they had everything. And so in verse 15, Jesus says, I know your works. You are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot. So because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. Now here's what's happening here. Laodicea is a prominent wealthy, like the most impressive of all of the seven cities. But for as much as they had, they actually didn't have the one thing they needed to survive, they didn't have water.

So they've got to pump in water from Colossae to the east and Heropolis to the north, and they're taking water from there. It's kind of like Vegas takes all the water from Colorado, okay? But if you ever drank water in Vegas, you're like, okay, this doesn't even taste like real water. And the same thing happened back then, only worse. Once it got into Laodicea, it's tepid, it's lukewarm, it had picked up all these minerals from the piping, and so it tastes disgusting. And Jesus does what he's done all series. He says, hey, this thing in your city is actually a metaphor for your attitude. You have a lukewarm attitude. And Jesus says he'll spit them out of his mouth. Now, the words spit you out, that softens it, okay? Because the original word that Jesus used in the Greek language 2,000 years ago, it's closer to like an involuntary vomit. All right, so like moms in the room, you remember when you were pregnant? You remember the smell of the thing? And you're just like, you just couldn't even stand it, it just brings it. That's what Jesus is saying. He's saying this is a reaction that the body's doing automatically. And he says that's his reaction to somebody who's not hot, who's not cold,

who's just lukewarm. So when our faith is comfortable, convenient, it's not really costing us anything, we might be getting lukewarm. We're not really sacrificing, we're not experiencing conviction. And here's the trap, when we look at our lives, we're like, we think it's fine, it feels fine, it's fine. But Jesus isn't saying, hey, fine is not fine with me. Jesus actually says, it brings up this visceral reaction when we live a half-hearted, lukewarm faith. I'll be honest with you, one of the things I've been praying about for today is that we stop it with a lukewarm following Jesus, whether that's one way or another. It's like, be hot, be cold, don't stay in neutral. Don't treat church or Christianity as a hobby that takes part of our life. I don't know if you know this, but Christianity makes a terrible hobby, okay? Charles Spurgeon, brilliant, dead, old preacher, he says it like this, he says, the most miserable person in the world is the half-committed Christian. Because they're just enough into God to be miserable in the world, they're just enough into the world to be miserable in God. It's kind of like this, okay? It's like, you go to the party on Saturday night, and all you're thinking about is,

you're gonna go to church on Sunday morning. And then on Sunday morning, you're in church, and all you're thinking about is what you did at the party last night. He said, it's a miserable hobby. That's lukewarm, lukewarm is not all in, not all out, just enough to be uncomfortable everywhere. It's like, yeah, of course I follow Jesus, except when it costs me at work. Yeah, I follow Jesus, except for my dating life. Follow Jesus, of course I do, but not really with what I comment on social media. I want you to write this down on your notes. This is number one, partial obedience is disobedience. Partial obedience, half forgiveness is disobedience. Half lust is disobedience. Here's the problem with lukewarm Christianity. Typically, the people who are lukewarm, when we're lukewarm, we are usually the last ones to know it. It's like our wife knows it, our drinking buddies know it, kids, they definitely know it, but we can't see it in ourselves. So that's why Jesus says in verse 17, he says this. He says, for you say, hey, I'm rich, I've prospered, I need nothing, but you don't realize underneath it all, you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. So the town of Laodicea, it's at this intersection of two major points on the Silk Road back 2,000 years ago. And so because of this trade route, anybody who's anybody would travel through Laodicea.

And so they got a bank there, and the bank is like the Roman Stock Exchange. So I want you to picture, this is Wall Street before Wall Street. And then they have this special black wool there that you could only get in Laodicea, and it was super fashionable. And so you gotta think about these people, they're like wearing all the high fashion, they're like wearing Gucci and Prada, not clothes from Amazon Prime, okay? Or if we're in Colorado, it's like Sitka and Arcteryx, okay? Like that's the clothes that they're wearing. They have their own medical center. And so the Mayo Clinic is just a walk away. If you get sick, there's no problem, the answer's in your own backyard. And the earthquake that leveled the city in 60 AD when Rome offered to help rebuild it, they said, hey, no thanks. We don't need your federal funding, we don't need your PPP loans, okay? Like we are good, we don't need it, we need nothing. And Jesus is looking at this group of people, he's just going like, you guys think that you're good? Bro, you are not good. But one of the things about people, about humans, is we have an incredible ability for self-deception. I'll tell you what that looks like. So at the beginning of summer,

I decided it was time to be done with the beard and I thought about growing a mustache. Hey, I appreciate that right there, thank you, thank you. One person in a room of 4,000, awesome. I asked my wife why she thought about me growing a mustache. She's like, I don't know, maybe. And so I took that as a yes and I shaved off the beard, I got the mustache. And the first weekend with a mustache on stage, I get a lot of comments. More than a couple people mentioned the only thing that was missing was a windowless white van, so I did not appreciate that, okay? So watch what you're saying. Finally, I run into this guy and he looks at me, he's like, oh my gosh, you shaved your beard. I barely noticed you. He goes, you look so much better. And so now he's got me worried about, like if I ever do regrow the beard, this guy doesn't think it looks good. Now I can't go back to the beard, the mustache isn't working. But later that night, my wife and I were in bed and I was like, it's time to see if the mustache is working for me. You know, you miss 100% of the shots you don't take. And she preemptively says, hey, so what do you think about who they're comparing you to online?

And I'm wondering, like, okay, who is a famous, handsome man with a mustache? And then she says, they're calling you Dr. Phil. Creativity. He's more handsome than I remember, okay, I'll just say that. But here's why I tell you that. If I can't see the truth about a mustache, what makes me think I can see the truth about my own soul? We can be confidently wrong about ourselves. And Jesus tells the church in Laodicea, he says, hey, you think that you're rich, you think that you need nothing, but actually you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. And the truth for us is this, it can look like you're winning at life while you're actually wasting it. You've seen this. You can hit every. Goal at work, but your kids barely know you. You post a highlight reel every single week, but you're falling apart in the group chat. Nobody sees. You show up to church every weekend, but at the same time, you never once let Jesus near the thing that you're struggling with. And so what does Jesus do? Jesus takes people who think that they have everything, and he makes them an offer.

Verse 18, he says, I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire so that you may be rich, white garments so that you may clothe yourself in the shame of your nakedness may not be seen, and salve to appoint your eyes so that you may see. He's saying, hey, when you admit your need, when you admit your need to Jesus, he says, I'm gonna make you rich in what really matters. I'm gonna cover your shame. I'm gonna open your eyes. You think you got it. I'm telling you, you can only get it from me. And then he says this, and this is where we're gonna spend most of our remaining time together. In verse 19, he says, those whom I love I reprove and I discipline, so be zealous and repent. Jesus says, part of what he's gonna do for us, because we are his children, he's gonna reprove, he's gonna rebuke, he's gonna discipline. He says, I am a loving father who disciplines my children. And I know some of us in the room, you're probably like, hey, I hear that. But us as parents, we don't really do discipline, okay? We're like gentle parenting, permissive parenting. We are letting the good come out of our kids on its own. And we don't actually need to discipline them. We would never discipline our kids. And the rest of us can tell, okay? Kids ministry volunteers can probably tell.

Okay, I got four kids of our own, and parents in the room, maybe you can resonate with this. My parenting has kind of just boiled down to threatening screen time. That is the number one trick in my bag. But here's the goal of discipline when it comes to parents. The goal of discipline is connecting disobedience to pain. Now here's why. It's about connecting sin to the consequences. So they lose screens. They get extra chores. They get an early curfew. They get brought up in a sermon, okay? I would never do that, okay? I just heat check for my kids when they're in here. What I'm trying to do is I'm trying to teach my kids that disobedience leads to pain because in life, disobedience to God inevitably ends in pain. That's the entire Old Testament. God's saying, hey, the way that the world is designed, when you obey my commands, you're gonna find life. But when you disobey, life is gonna end up bringing you pain. It doesn't happen right away. I mean, we've all got people we look at and you're just like, hey, it seems like it's going fine for this person. They're not following Jesus. They're breaking all the rules

and it seems like everything's going fine. And it does seem like everything's fine. But what the Bible says is that there can be a season when it works out fine, but at the end, all of us will end up like the prodigal son that Jesus talks about, where there's a season where everything's great right up until it's not. He ends up in more pain than he ever saw coming. So I want you to get this. In the same way, I love my kids, so I discipline my kids now so that life doesn't end up disciplining them later. And we don't like to talk too much about discipline here in church, okay? Like we'd rather talk about grace and like love and all that stuff, but discipline is not the opposite of love. Discipline is what love looks like when it refuses to let you stay comfortable with something that's hurting you. Hebrews 12, 11 says this, it says it so clearly. It says, no discipline seems pleasant at the time. Discipline is always painful. However, later on, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. That's what discipline does ahead of time. It says, you couldn't see the end of it. You couldn't see the consequences ahead of time.

Somebody could have told you about the consequences a hundred times. It still wouldn't have mattered. And so what happens is God lets you feel it. So write this down in your notes. Your discipline isn't God's anger, it's God's love. He says, I am a loving father, and when I love my kids, I discipline my kids. So maybe you're in a season and it feels like God is punishing you, it feels like God's not doing his job because if he was doing his job, you'd still have your job, you'd still have the relationship, you'd still have the kids and I wonder for all of us, what if the thing that feels like God's anger is actually a sign of his love because he loves you too much to let you stay comfortable in something that is only gonna hurt you over time. Jesus says, I'm trying to wake you up, I'm disciplining you because I love you. And then right after this, in the verse, he says this, so be zealous and repent. He says, be zealous, and the word zeal, it comes from this ancient word which means to burn or to boil. So what Jesus is saying, he's making this comparison, he's saying lukewarm is kinda like good for nothing, it's like coffee that sat out on the counter for four hours. I mean, this is good for nothing, lukewarm, but instead of that, be zealous. Zeal is like this, on fire, passionate, full of energy, and zeal takes action.

How do you know if you've got a zeal that God talks about, if there's a zealousness for your faith? It's when you know that there's something that you need to do or you know there's something you need to stop doing, you do that now. Zeal takes action, that's zealous. It means you're sitting here right now and you're going, okay, I gotta confess this sin now. We gotta sign up for marriage counseling now. There's this urgency and this action when it comes to being zealous, not this kinda comfort and just waiting to see what happens. I remember when I was serving at our West Campus, I got a call one day, I'm in the middle of a meeting, get a call from a man in our church, and I can't pick up, I'm in this meeting, and he calls me again, he calls me again, he calls me six times, doesn't leave a message, and I can't pick up, I wait till the meeting's over, and a couple hours later, I call him back, and I was like, hey, what's up, man? He goes, Jesse, me and my girlfriend, we've been living together for the last five years, we've been living together, and we just learned the Bible says we're not supposed to do that, so we're calling to see if we can come by the church so you could marry us. And I'm talking to him, I was like, yeah, I'm gonna be here for about another hour, like, if you wanna come by, I'll marry you.

He goes, no, no, it's okay, we can get ahold of you. We went down to the courthouse, we got married on our own. I tell you that story because that's zeal, and zeal is a command from Jesus. He's not saying, hey, it'd be good if you were zealous, he's not saying, hey, you probably should be zealous, that's a command, he says, be zealous, which means when you see a change in your life that needs to get made, make the change now. So let me ask you a very pointed question. Does the word zeal mean zeal? Does the word zealous define your faith? Like a hunger and a passion, a desire for more, a desire to take action now, does zealous describe your faith? Or on the other side is a better description, hey, my faith is fine, it's good enough, it's kind of lukewarm. I wanna tell you another place I've seen zeal, and it's a reflection of what Sean shared with us earlier. This week, over 1,000 students are gonna go to camp, and my belief is that God's gonna meet them this very week, and I'm grateful to be able to go up, teach the morning sessions for high school for the third year in a row, and all my kids are at camp this year for the first time, middle school and high school, so they're all excited to go to camp. So they're all at camp the same week, same time. And I've always joked that when all the kids go to camp

together, mom and dad are going to Mexico, okay? Like, just, we're gonna take a couple weeks. But I have this dilemma, because last year I'm up there teaching the sessions, and like it changed something in my heart, and I was going like, I don't think I can miss this. Because last year students arrived for the morning session, and they arrived at the morning session, they're on like four hours of sleep, a bad cup of YMCA coffee, okay? And they're sitting there, and rather than falling asleep or leaning back, they are leaning in, their Bibles are notebooks, their Bibles are open, their notebooks are out, and they are ready to go. It's like they're on fire, they wanna learn. That's not lukewarm. That's hunger. And guys, I tell ya, that's happening. And in our student ministry, what I'm hearing from my pastor friends around the country, it's not just our students. My friends tell me of thousands of students being baptized on college campuses in a single night. Church attendance up in the next generation. Bible sales up in the next generation. There is a hunger and a zeal for Jesus in the next generation. And we are cheering you on. But I wanna take a moment and just go like,

why is this happening now? Outside of a move of God, which I believe is happening. But why is that happening now? And what I've come to realize, the reason I think that that's happening, they're turning to faith and turning to Jesus like that, is because this, our culture isn't working. Because for so long, culture just promised like, if you just follow our rules, if you make enough money, if you get the right education, if you date the right person, you vote for the right party, you live in the right neighborhood, you get in the right shape, it'll all be enough. In the next generation, they're realizing, we are doing all of that and we are exhausted and it's still not working. They're saying, we got the right education and we still can't find a job. We dated the right person, we still feel lonely. We got the right job, we still don't feel fulfilled. We got in the right shape, but we still don't like what we see in the mirror. We got the right salary, we bought all the right toys, we still feel empty. We got the kids in all the right programs, we still feel like they're behind. We go to counseling. The inside, we're just thinking, I really thought I'd be further along by now.

We look at politicians, we think, I thought this person was actually gonna get it right and we've tried everything else and we realize the answer is not money, it's not more pleasure, it's not more sex, it's not another hobby, it's not a relationship, it's not even more counseling, the answer is Jesus. It's only Jesus, he's the only one that can make this right. And what I'll tell you is that culture had its shot. And one of the things I've heard people say, the devil overplayed his hand and now it's Jesus' turn. Because like, Christian, non-Christian, okay, you look around, you go, there's something broken. I mean, there are record overdose deaths in every state in our country. Chances are, all of us could name someone we know who has been affected by an overdose. Anxiety and depression are climbing in every age group. Chances are, someone in your family wrestles with anxiety or depression. Our country is so divided, families can't even sit across a table from each other anymore without getting an argument. There are marriages ending that nobody saw coming. There are politicians promising to finally get it right and we look back and we're like, it still never gets fixed. And we don't need a new program. We don't need a better strategy. We don't need another empty promise. What we need is we need God to move.

What we need is what the Bible calls revival. Now, that's a buzzword right now in Christian culture. I don't know what your algorithm's like online. You might hear revival all the time, but here's what revival means. Revival means, this is when God moves so powerfully that a whole church, a whole city, a whole nation turns back to him at once. Revival is not just a event. It's not sold out stadiums. It's not just emotionalism. It's when our complacency becomes conviction. It's when people start confessing sin instead of hiding it. It's when people, they're just compelled to forgive instead of keep and score. And God's presence gets so real in our lives that it spills out into our families, into our neighborhoods, into our cities. And that's what we need. We don't need some slightly improved version of the same broken thing. We need God to move. And that's what I've been praying for. I'm telling you, as I walk our streets, as I walk these rows, I've been praying for it. I wanna see it. I mean, I wanna see addiction lose its grip on our city. I wanna see marriages that everybody had written off get raised from the dead. I wanna see a next generation rise up,

be the leaders God has called them to be. I wanna see what happens at camp next week be the beginning of a move of God that echoes for generations. I mean, I wanna see freedom in the front range. And like, my heart's desire, I want to see revival in my lifetime. And here's my fear. My fear is that revival could actually be starting to happen. It could start to happen. And we miss it. That there could be a move of God that happens in our city and in our country, and we just watch it on YouTube. I don't wanna miss it. Here's how we miss it. And right now, I'm gonna pray for you. this down, there's no revival without repentance. The Bible's so clear, there's no revival without repentance. And this is not repentance for those people, you know, like those people who have all the problems, those ones who deal with the sins that I don't deal with, those ones who vote for the person I didn't vote for, we're saying those people need to repent. That's not what this repentance is. I mean, true repentance doesn't say they need it. True repentance doesn't even say we need it. What does true repentance say? I need to repent.

And if you try to get revival without repentance, all you'll get is a cheap imitation where you get all of the feelings and none of the power. And the cities in Revelation should serve as a warning to us because every single one of them, Memphis, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, Laodicea, do you know what they are right now? They are all ancient ruins with tourists and gift shops. The city of Laodicea that was so wealthy, it could rebuild itself without any help, is now just a quarry. And people are picking through the wreckage of the city that said we need nothing, they're picking through that wreckage to build other houses. And when you think about Jesus, Jesus saw these cities, he saw what's happening, but he doesn't write letters to cities, he wrote letters to the churches because he knew something. He knew that when the church compromises, the city suffers. He knew that the hope for any city, it's not education, it's not government, it surely isn't more taxes. The hope for the city is that church, and if that church stops caring, then the city doesn't stand a chance. I want you to write this down, this is the last one. As goes the church, so goes the city. That's what Jesus has been saying to the church, he's saying if the church compromises, the city falls. If the church tolerates sin, it's gonna land on the city. If the church caves into culture,

the city loses its only hope. And if you look at the cities in our country that are plagued by crime and corruption and the chaos of godless ideologies, they are all cities where the majority of churches gave up, gave in, pastors just moved on to someplace easier. Jesus isn't talking about history, he's talking about America. So my question today is, Flatirons, what are we gonna do in light of that? As Colorado gets more hostile to Christian values, as the Front Range empties out its churches, how will we respond? And will we stand firm, will we hold the line? Will we be salt and light in the city of Denver no matter how dark it gets? Or are we just gonna accept a lukewarm, not good enough, not really gonna change anybody else kind of faith that leaves our city empty at hope and any shot at something better? Because if we don't wake up, if we don't repent, our city doesn't stand a chance. But the change we need doesn't start in Denver. The change we need starts first with you and me. Here's a question I want you to sit with for a second. When it comes to our prayers and our thoughts and our impact on the city, okay? If God answered every single prayer that our church has prayed this year,

would anything actually change in our city? Or have our prayers just been focused on us? It's not really a question about God, that's a question about us. And that's what Jesus keeps on coming back to time and time again in every one of these letters. One word, one theme, he says, repent. Turn back before it's too late. Rethink how you think about everything, repent. And as we've been reading these letters for seven weeks and just applying different ones to the different parts of our life, I just was thinking, I was like, what would it look like if Jesus wrote a letter directly to me? The same way that he knew all these churches and he spoke specifically to them, what would he say to me? So I spent some time writing down the letter that I think Jesus would write to Jesse in 2026. He goes like this, he said, Jesse, I know your works. Starts the same way as the other letters. I know your works, I know you show up, I know you stay faithful. I know you've held on to me. Yet this I hold against you. You're trying to control everything. Your kids, your wife, your job, your team, your future. You forget that you don't hold the future. Control is an illusion,

and that your grip isn't what's been holding everything together. I've been holding it together. Jesse, if you don't repent, you'll become your own self-fulfilling prophecy. In trying to control everything, you'll lose everything. Not because I take it from you, but because your hands were never big enough to hold it to begin with. But Jesse, if you repent, if you give up control, you'll actually find the peace that surpasses understanding. You'll find the good shepherd who's been holding your family, your team, your future better than you ever could. Remember, I'm the amen. I get the final word, even on this. He who has ears to hear, let him hear what the Spirit is saying, Jesse, to you. That's the letter that Jesus has been hammering in my heart this week, and I wonder, what letter would he write you? Would he say, like, I know about the comparison? I know about the pills. He knows that you're living together. He knows that you're not alone. He knows that you're not alone. He knows that you're not alone. He knows that you're not alone. He knows you hate what you see in the mirror. He knows the bitterness that you've been feeding.

He knows the success you've been chasing. He knows. He knows all of that, and then here's how he responds. In verse 20 he says, behold, I stand at the door and knock. And if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come into him and eat with him and he with me. He says, I want to come be a part of your life forever. And I have this door built for today and there's something that I want you to know about this door. This door actually only opens from one side. Because the truth is, Jesus doesn't kick doors down. He's not gonna force his way into your life. He says this right there. He says he knocks. And then he waits. He waits for you to open. And the truth is, he has been standing at the doors of our lives for a long, long time. For some of us, this door represents a closet in our life that we've been trying to hide as long as we can remember. Whether it's our fear, our doubt, how we handle our money, our sex life, our career, the door is shut. And the definition of a lukewarm Christian is we let Jesus into some parts of our lives, even most the parts of our lives, but not others. And he stands outside the door and he knocks on the door,

but then he waits and he wants into that closet and he's not gonna shame you. He doesn't wanna embarrass you. He wants to clean out that closet so that you can experience the grace and the freedom that comes from being fully known and fully loved by him. And as I've been sitting with this verse this week, just picturing Jesus standing at the door, knocking, saying, Jesse, you can let me in. You can let me in. I wonder if that's what he's doing with you right now. He's not shaming you. He's not listing your failures. All the things we're afraid that he's gonna do. He's just knocking and waiting and wanting in. So my question for us today is where has he been knocking? Maybe it's the door of control that I've been hiding behind. Maybe it's something that nobody in this room knows about besides you and God, but whatever. where it is, we gotta know this. He's not asking for you to fix it first. He's not waiting for you to just clean it all up in here before you open the door and welcome him in. He's saying, no, no, no, no, just open the door. Just say, Jesus, I can't clean this up on my own. So I'm gonna repent, I'm gonna open the door, I'm gonna let you see this, and then we're gonna clean this up together. And Jesus, you're gonna have to do most of the work. And then there are some of us in this room today,

we actually need to open the door to Jesus for the very first time. Because truth is, we've never opened the door to Jesus. We've always just kind of kept him out there. We know he's been knocking. I mean, you can feel it in your chest right now. And you're thinking, he would never wanna come into my life. What I've got behind this door, with what I've done, I am too far gone, and I am a mess. And the good news for you and for me is that Jesus died for our mess. So you don't have to clean up, you don't have to make things right, because the truth is, we can't make things right. No, we just invited him in, he came in, not because I cleaned up, but because of the cross of Jesus Christ. He says he wants into your life. And when Jesus says he wants to come in and eat with you, you know what that means, right? He says he wants the kind of relationship with you that he had with the people in his life when he was here on earth. And the people that Jesus spent his time eating with, I mean, think about them. They were not the people who had it all together. They were traitors, they were sinners, they were prostitutes, they were people that everybody else had given up on, and people who had given up on themselves.

But Jesus knew something about them that they didn't know about themselves. Jesus knew they were worth saving. And so Jesus pulls up a chair, sits down at the table, and says, you are exactly the person I wanted to have a meal with. Jesus is knocking on the door of our lives right now. He wants to come into your life to give you grace, forgiveness, not just a second chance, because the truth is, we'll mess that one up too. He wants to give you a whole new life from above. And today, you can invite him into your life for the very first time. I mean, I'm telling you, we got baptism tubs at all of our campuses. We'll be ready for you, you get baptized next week, whatever that looks like. But in just a moment, we're gonna take communion together. And as you walked in the room, you probably got just a little cup of bread and a cup of juice that symbolizes Jesus' body that was broken on a cross, his blood that was shed on a cross for you and for me to forgive all of our sins and give us the grace we needed to be reconnected with him. And the Bible says that communion is something that people who follow Jesus, who have put their faith and trust in Jesus do.

And maybe for you, today is the very first time that you said, I trust him, I'm putting my faith in him. I don't understand it, I definitely have not cleaned up yet, but I trust that he's just gonna come into my life and we're gonna figure this out together. If that's you today, I want you to take communion today as just a sign for the very first time. Jesus, I trust you and I welcome you into my life. So we're gonna pray, and then I'll give you a couple more instructions about the last song. So God, right now, what I'm asking is that, God, I'm asking that you would help fix our eyes on you in this moment. God, that as we take this bread, as we drink this juice, that we'd be reminded we have a God that doesn't sit far off waiting for us to make his way, to make our way to him. God, we have a God who came down to us, who comes to our door, who stands outside it just waiting for us to open up. And so God, in this moment, we open up our hearts. God, we open up our lives. God, we open up these parts that we have not shown anybody. And God, we've been keeping you out of, God, we open up to you. And this bread and this juice just reminds us that God, you died for all of that because you thought that we were worth saving. God, we love you. God, we trust you.

We are grateful for you. So in Jesus' name we pray, amen. So we're gonna pray. We're gonna give you a moment here to reflect, to maybe listen to a couple words of this song, to take communion, and then when you're ready, just wanna invite you to sing with us. You might stay sitting, you might kneel, you might stand, whatever your posture of surrender needs to be to Jesus, let's do that together as we take communion and as we sing.