The Unwatched Gate

All right, Emmanuel. Can you give it up for Jesus? Come on. I love it. I love it. I love it. Well, listen, I'm so thankful for this weekend. It was just a great weekend of rest. And again, we got a chance to celebrate our lovely pastor, Pastor Nate. And man, I just love Pastor Nate and Jodie Roos. Can you guys help me just thank them? Just a great big round of applause. Thank you, pastor, for being a shepherd, for being a kingdom-minded leader. Man, you guys are awesome. Listen, it is so, so exciting to live for Jesus in these times, but it's also challenging. And so we've been in this series called, in the book of Revelation, studying the seven churches of Revelation, looking back on the ancient times. And so I want you to grab your Bible. Come on. How many of you have a Bible? I love physical Bibles. We love them here at Emmanuel. If you've got one, wave it in the air like you do care. Come on. I always tell people, it's the B-I-B-L-E. It's the book that's right for... Some of you went to Sunday school. That's so good. That's so good. But we're going to go right to Revelation chapter three. It's the last book in the Bible. And so it's right before those indexes and all the appendixes and all that stuff back there. And so it's going to be awesome. Revelation chapter three, verse one through six. And it reads this, to the angel of the church in Sardis write, these are the words of him who holds the seven spirits of God and the seven stars. I know your deeds. You have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Wake up. Strengthen what remains and is about to die. For I have found your deeds unfinished in the sight of my God. Remember therefore what you have received and heard. Hold it fast. Repent. But if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief and you will not know at what time I will come to you. Yet you have a few people in Sardis who have not soiled their clothes. They will walk with me dressed in white for they are worthy. The one who was victorious will like them be dressed in white. I will never blot out the name of that person from the book of life, but will acknowledge that name before my father and his angels. Whoever has ears, let them hear what the spirit says to the churches. And then we're going to go right over to the book of Matthew. And if you have it, you can go and tab it over in your Bible, or you can watch it on the screen here, but it's Matthew chapter seven, verse 13 through 14. And it's about Jesus speaking to his disciples. And he's talking to them about life. He says something that I think is important for us to understand as we jump into this message. This is what he says. Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road

that leads to destruction and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life and only a few find it. I've tagged this text today with the title called The Unwatched Gate. The Unwatched Gate. Let's pray. Jesus, thank you for your word that it's truth. It's alive. It's active. It's powerful. Speak to us through it. Shape us by it. Mold us and conform us to your image so that we may be who you have purposed us to be. It's in Jesus' name. And everybody that agrees says amen and amen. The Unwatched Gate. I want to give you a little backdrop of Sardis. It's a great community, and it had a lot of things in it during its day and time, culturally rich. But particularly in 546 BC, the most fortified city in the ancient world it was. It had this major acropolis 1,500 feet above ground. It had cliffs on every side. It was almost impregnable for people to try to get into it. King Cyrus, who's also throughout Scripture, you can read about him in several Old Testament passages, he had a great military regime that had tried to penetrate this acropolis, and 14 days he tried and nothing happened. Then all of a sudden, one day, a soldier who was to be attending to one of the areas of the cliff that had a nearby gate to it, he had dropped his helmet and it went over the edge. Then he decides to climb down this kind of unbeaten off-the-road path, and one of the Persian spies had watched him. And that night, the Sardin empire had fell for the first time, and this soldier had simply lost touch with the this assignment to guard the gate. The city that was once known for never being able to be overtaken had gotten overtaken, and it was simply because this impregnable Acropolis that fell at one place, nobody was watching, the complacency of that soldier led to its collapse. And every collapse begins at a place where we stop watching. And so when we look at that spiritually, I want you to kind of think about this in the spiritual sense as we explore the book of Revelation today. The big idea I want you to take away is this,

spiritual complacency isn't a sudden collapse. It's a gate left open and unguarded, one compromise at a time. You know, I remember at one point, I'm a preacher, I love Jesus, I love the Bible, I love teaching God's word, making disciples, and I remember at one point, I had grown really stale in my faith. I'd grown really stagnant. I didn't want to study as much anymore. I decided I'm gonna go and watch some Netflix and watch some Hulu and binge out, eat some cookies and cream mint ice cream, come on, somebody know what I'm talking about? And I was on my couch and I just was, I was in a mode. And I remember one of my favorite shows was Chicago PD. Anybody like Chicago PD? Come on, Hank Voight, man, he's the man. He's the real deal. And I remember I was sitting on my couch and the Holy Spirit spoke to me. He said, Will, it's interesting that you know more lines about Hank Voight than you've quoted about my word this week. Wow, I was like, oh, that's not God, no way, right? But the Holy Spirit began to minister to me and show me that I had opened some gates in my life, some spiritual gates, and I had began to be complacent with my prayer time, with me being in the Word. And then it led to me being short and crass with my wife and I was angry and short with my team and my kids.

I would kind of avoid them a little bit. And all these things began to happen because I simply had let down the gates of what I was hearing, what I was watching, that began to affect what I was saying, and on and on. And it's interesting, friends, Jesus here talks to a church in Sardis and he's writing to them for a particular reason and we cannot miss it. You see, what was happening in Sardis is that Jesus identified the compromise in their spiritual walk with him. Their spiritual vitality had decreased. And he understood that they had began to compromise the faith, which led to complacency because of the world's pressures around them that eventually contaminated the church. You hear what he said? He said, hey, hey, you have a reputation as alive, that's alive, but you're spiritually dead. Due to cultural pressures, we too can disregard the gateways of how things enter our lives, which too can contaminate our own faith. And so I want you to put on your thinking hat with me for a moment, can you do that? Everybody just put on your thinking hat, thinking hat, here we go, here we go. I want you to dive into what we're getting ready to talk about, it's also in your Emmanuel app. But I wanna talk about some of the cultural nuances

that were also back in the day of Sardis that really still exist in our day and time today. Solomon wrote that there's nothing new under the sun. And so things may take on a different face or a different fashion, but they're really the same underlying things. And the culture of that time was filled with idol worship, pagan gods, the god of Artemis was there, they worshiped at the temple of Artemis and so many other gods during that time. And what you begin to hear and see Jesus talk about in this text is the church had began to allow their faith to be contaminated by the pressures of the world, which caused complacency because of some of their compromise. And I realize that if Jesus was talking to a church 2000 plus years ago then, it definitely was applicable then, but it has to be even applicable now. And so these ideologies I really want us to lean into for a moment. These ideologies function as unwatched gates. You see, there's this gradual tide of human ideology influences that begin to construct what we believe. The popular unbiblical thinking that circulates around the world and attempts to draw us away from God's truth. All these things were happening then and they're still happening now. And if we're not careful, what Jesus spoke to Sardis is definitely applicable to us.

And so I wanna give you four of these functions. ...unwatched gates that shows his ideologies. Here's the first one, therapeutic moralism. Therapeutic moralism. This says God wants you to be happy and healthy. This is probably the most deep-rooted one in our Western culture. Some authors talked about this and they identified in one of their works called Soul in Transition some of the research that revealed most young American people including church goers actually believe in a therapeutic God whose primary job is to help them feel good about themselves and resolve their problems. It's this mentality that God just wants me to be happy and healthy. And what gate does this open? Here's what it is. It opens the gate that a faith built around personal flourishing rather than personal holiness. You see, when following Christ stops producing comfort, the faith has nothing left to stand on for this person. When things get difficult, no, no, no, no, I don't want faith anymore. And suffering becomes evidence against God rather than being a part of following God. And this is when the cross, the cross that's centrality to our life, the cross then slowly and quietly makes its way of being relocated to our backstory.

This is what they call therapeutic moralism. God wants me to be happy and healthy and so I'll do whatever makes me happy and healthy. The other one is expressive individualism. This would say, you need to live your truth. Another phrase would say, you do you, boo, right? Some more authors that I found in research, they wrote a book called The Rise and Fall of the Modern Self. It traces how the romantic movement that came from Europe in the mid 1600s began to influence the thinking from someone that's a famous psychologist called Fraud, Fraudian Works and Thinking. It began to influence the sexual revolution combined to produce a culture where the self is the ultimate authority and authentic self-expression is the highest moral act. So this shows our self and my authentic expression of myself is above God. It's objective. The self is no longer something to be disciplined toward virtue. It's something to be liberated and expressed. That's what this ideology is circulating around the world says. You need to live your truth. Be the best you you can be. Everything else is subject to you. The gate it opens is this,

the slow redefinition of repentance as self-rejection rather than self-correction. So what it means is in this framework, any call for us to change, especially when it comes to sexuality, identity, our personal desire, it feels like it's violence against self. Instead of being able to say, you need to repent about this, repentance begins to look like oppression against yourself. And so I can't repent about that because that's stuffing me. That's stuffing who I am. That's stuffing who I wanna be. That's a form and an ideology that's beginning to function as an unwatched gate in our lives, friends, and can manifest itself in so many ways. Here's another one. Here's another one. Political tribalism as functional religion. Woo! We just celebrated the 4th of July. I love our country. I love being an American. I'm so excited. I got a great passport. I get to travel around and see the beauties of other countries and cultures, but I'm so thankful to be an American,

but my allegiance is to Jesus first. But listen to this, listen to this. Political tribalism as functional reality of religion says this, our side is the righteous side. So left or right, the mechanism is the same. Political identity increasingly functions as a surrogate religion. It provides community and meaning and a moral framework, even enemies and a sense of participation in something bigger than myself. But the danger for the church isn't that Christians engage in politics. No, no, no, no, no. The danger is when our political identities become the primary filter through which scripture is read rather than the other way around. So what gate does that open? It opens a gate where the church becomes confused about the kingdom of God being a political program. It opens this gate where the church becomes sorted by ideology rather than formed. by discipleship. Discipleship itself gets subordinated, it gets put sub, under, to political activation. And critically, those who hold the wrong political views are implicitly or explicitly made to feel outside of the community. You voted for who? I can't believe you. You're not a Christian. If we're not careful, that ideology begins to form as political tribalism and it functions as religion. Here's one more. Here's one more. It's the last one, I promise. Consumerism applied to church. Now, this convicted me. Before I preach to you, I have to be preached to. I don't preach to somebody

before Jesus preaches to me through the Word. This convicted me. This is what this says. Consumerism applied to the church says, I'll stay as long as Emmanuel meets my needs. Come on, I'm convicted. I know you are. I'm convicted too. Shopping for a church, church hopping, raiding sermons, treating Sunday as a product to be evaluated, all of these reflect a fundamentally consumerist posture toward the body of Christ. Here's the gate it opens, friends, the erosion of covenant commitment. That I'm with you. We're in small group. Get in a small group. Get in a small group. Summertime, get in a small group. Covenant commitment, the erosion of covenant commitment, accountability, and the willingness to submit to spiritual authority. You see, a consumer can't be discipled. Why? Because they're evaluating the product. They're not being formed by a community. When the sermon isn't engaging, when the relationship gets difficult, when the church asks for something too tough or costly, the consumer exits. You see, these things were really a part of some of the things that the church and its artists were also experiencing. They just take on a different form today in our context and our culture. But Jesus had to speak to them, and we're going to go through it verse by verse. Verse 1, he says to them, I know your deeds, meaning I know your works. Not just the works you do, because this is not works-based salvation. Salvation is only given by Jesus Christ through Christ alone because of the work he did on the cross. But he's saying, I know your behavior. I know how you're living. And he says, you had a reputation that was once alive, but you're actually spiritually dead. He was saying, you're living off past glory. You're living off the yesteryear. You're living off your old faith. We're supposed to go from faith to faith, from glory to glory. You may be living off grandma's faith or mom's faith. No, no, no. He says, no, no, I need you to become spiritually vital in this time. So, he sounds the alarm. He says, I know your deeds for you have a reputation of being alive. Let me just tell you something.

We have a great church at Emmanuel. Have a great church. But don't get it twisted, friends. We've got great big screens. We can have great smoke machines and pastor naked put on some nice skinny jeans, and we can still be dead. It's true. I know he would never do that. But we can have all these things, and glamour, and lights, and programs, and activities, and we can still be a dead church. And so, we have to be really cautious and mindful of what Jesus was saying to them and what he also could say to us today. And so, he tells them in verse 2, he says, friends, wake up. That's what he tells them. This word, wake up, it's a Greek word. It actually means to become alive again. You know, some of us, all of us, we have moments where we grow complacent. And it's like we got to fan the flame, right? Got to come alive again. And Jesus tells them through John, he says, become alive again. In essence, he says, begin living like a Christian again. This is what he tells them, wake up. He goes on to say, strengthen what remains in verse 2. This word strengthen is amazing because he says, to restore to strength. He said that there's a little bit of muscle in you. Yeah, you've got some muscle atrophy, but you still got muscles. If you just work those muscles a little bit, it's going to get strong again. Restore your strength, renew your strength, become reinvigorated again so that you can be that church that I've known you to be with a great reputation. One translation puts it this way, put some resolve into what little vigor you have left. He says, strengthen what remains. Strengthen what remains. You see, Christian virtues or activities that were once neglected by the church of Sardis and were about to die, Jesus says, listen, there's a few embers left on that fire. Put some oxygen on it so it can blow again. Get back to being salt. Get back to being light. in your job, in your community, in your home, in your neighborhood. Get back to being that vital witness that I've placed you there to be. He goes on to say in verse 2 still, he says,

but I found your deeds unfinished in the sight of my God. This is very important for us to realize, Emmanuel, because what Jesus discovers here is that Sardians were living well for Jesus at one point. We see their reputation was good. Their flame had decreased. Like Paul would tell Timothy, fan the flame again. And some of their works were unfinished. They weren't fully living out the standard of God that has set for them. And this is what he's saying. He says, in the sight of my God, from God's point of view, he's meaning from God's standard that had not been met by them. You see, friends, we can take Christianity and Jesus can be our Savior, but he not only has to be our Savior, he has to be our Lord. That means he has Lord over my mind, Lord over my eyes, Lord over my tongue, Lord over my ears, Lord over my heart, Lord over my hands, Lord over my parts that he's given me, Lord over my feet, Lord over every area in my life. He cannot just be my Savior. And God has set a standard that we need to live by, because he was righteous, we were not. And sometimes we find ourselves making God the subject and us the object. One translation would say it this way, I have found your lives as Christians, verse 2 meaning, do not meet the standards that my God has set. So, wake up from your spiritual sleep and renew the strength of the Christian qualities you still have before they die completely. In verse 3, Jesus goes on, and he gives really five imperatives. I want to just highlight three of them. What I mean by imperatives is these are musts. They're like, must. He's saying, you must do this. If you're going to be a spiritually vital body of believers, you're going to be back to that place of having a good reputation and not spiritually dead anymore. He's basically meaning you must do this. And this is what he says in verse 3. Come on, let's go to it. He says, remember… Everybody say, remember. He says, remember therefore what you have received and heard. This is what he means by this. He's talking about the gospel. He's saying, remind yourself of the old time way. He said, go back to that place where you once were spiritually vital, you were vibrant, your faith was on fire. He's saying, remember the gospel. Remember what I've done for you, that I died on the cross for you, that I substituted my life for your life. You who was a sinner, I became sin on your behalf so that you may become the righteousness of God and have a relationship with me. You see, Jesus and what he did on the cross, it's amazing, because God no longer sees us as sinners separated from him. Even though he's loving, holy, perfect, but yet just, he has to judge sin. And so, what Jesus did is come as God, the incarnate God, to give his life on behalf of your life and my life and the life of the world.

And what happened there was God was redeeming man, meaning he was purchasing back man from the bondage of slavery, from the grip of the devil. And he's saying, remember what I did for you. Remember this gospel, that gospel that not only saved you, but that gospel that also sanctifies you and make you more like me as you follow me. This is what he's saying. Remember it. Remember it. Remember it. He says, hold fast to it and keep it. Keep it close to me. Don't let it go. Don't forget the truth of who I am, the truth of what I've done, the truth of how I've changed your life. You have to remember that you were broke, busted, and disgusted, that you were far from me, that you were down and out, but I picked you up. I turned you around. I placed your feet on the solid ground. He says, remember that. Hold it fast. Keep it. Obey it. But then he says, repent. This is the hard word right here, folk. He says, you've got to recognize the way you're going is not the way that I've set for you to go. So, you've got to be willing to turn from it. You've got to be willing to turn away from that and turn toward me. This is what Jesus is helping the church and Sardis to understand. Remember, hold fast, but you've got to repent of your ways. Sometimes we feel like repentance is so hard. Why? Because of the ideology that it's oppressive to me. But no, no, no, no, no. When we repent, it brings us closer to God. Convicted, that means only conformity. When you're convicted of something that's not like God, that means he's convicting you so that he can conform you as you repent. It's amazing, friends. And so he tells them, this is how you get the victory. Verse four, he continues to say, he says, "'Yet you have a few people in Sardis "'who have not soiled their clothes.'" When I read this, I was so excited because I thought it meant the church of sardines. I love sardines. Come on, you know those fish in the can, put hot sauce on it, come on, anybody with me,

come on, I got some, glory to God. I love it, I love it, I love it. I was like, man, I like this church, my people. But I found out it was Sardis. But he said, "'Yet you have a few people in Sardis "'who have not soiled their clothes.'" In essence, what he's saying, church, is there's a remnant. There's a remnant, there's a small group of people. The majority had already had their clothes soiled. What he meant by that is their life had been contaminated, it was getting into the church, and so Jesus issues this alarm, this warning, letting them know, hey, there are a few of you left that's remained faithful. And so it reminds me of Matthew chapter five, verse six, the beatitude verse where Jesus says, "'Blessed,' meaning joyful, "'nourished by God's goodness, "'are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.'" Friends, I just want to pause there because what Jesus is saying is there's still a remnant in the church, and I believe there's still a remnant in the church globally today that says, Lord, I thirst and hunger for you. I don't want to live the way I used to live anymore because I saw what that got me. I saw that that was the road that was wide that led to destruction, but I want the narrow gate. I want the way that few follow because I want to thirst and hunger after you.

I want to seek after your righteousness and be in right standing with you. He says, for they will be completely satisfied. So in Sardis here, the majority of the believers spiritually contaminated because of the world's pressures, their walk had been compromised by things that they had dabbled into, they weren't supposed to. They had fallen into spiritual complacency. They thought they were alive, but they were dead. But Jesus says, hey, there's a few of you that have not had your clothes soiled. He says, let me tell you what'll happen with those people. He says, they will walk with me dressed in white for they are worthy. Very interesting passage. Jesus here speaks to the context in their culture. You know, Sardis was a famous city that was known for its textile production and luxurious clothing. So people would walk in Sardis with these beautiful, expensive robes. And so Jesus interweaves the gospel into the context of them. And he says, hey, most of you like these robes. And so there's some of you who haven't had your robes soiled yet. And those who are faithful and those who are the remnant, they're going to be dressed in white. They're going to walk with me one day and be intimate with me and fellowship with me in heaven. And he gets them to understand the context

of what they're in. And you see Sardis, the city, prized outward garments. Listen to one historian said. He said, an inscription in Asia Minor, which is the area of where the churches were, an inscription in Asia Minor, which cautioned anyone from appearing in soiled garments for the worship of the gods, since this would dishonor the God. So what he's saying is, hey, when people would go worship in the Artemis Temple and worship the gods, they couldn't go before that God in that temple with soiled clothes. And so Jesus speaks right to their context. But he's wanting them to understand that he's not so much concerned about the outward garments, he prizes spiritual purity. He wants them to know that I'm after your heart. I'm after how you live your life and how the behaviors of you living that life is reflected upon how you believe in me and you live with me and I live my life through you. And so we see here that he's giving them this amazing context of their own culture so that they can see themselves in it. Jesus here, it's right to the nitty gritty. And then in verse five, he gives them three promises. Watch this, watch this. He says this, verse five.

The one who is victorious will. Let me just pause there. What is he saying? He wants them to be victorious. You see, sometimes we think God is this gloom and doom God. Yeah, he's a judgmental, he's a God of judgment. He's a God of pain. He's a God of misery. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Those are a part of God's attributes because he's holy. But the beautiful part about God is he's very loving. He's very merciful. Merciful. He's very kind. He's very compassionate. He's very gracious. That's the beautiful part about who God is. And so here we see that he's telling them, Hey, the one that will be victorious, there'll be like the ones that'll be dressed in white. How can you be victorious? It all goes back to verse three. Remember, hold fast, repent. And he says to them, he says, I will never blot out the name of the person from the book of life. We've got to unpack this for a moment. So let's go. Revelation chapter 20 verse 12, revelation chapter 20 verse 12. Jesus here talks about the book of life through John, the revelator who's writing this book of revelation. And he said, John, he writes and I saw the dead great and small standing before the throne and the books, plural were open. Another book singular was open, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done, their deeds, behaviors, the works as recorded in the books. And then verse 15, same chapter, verse chapter 20, he says, anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the

lake of fire. Let me unpack this for a moment for you. Okay. Jesus is giving John to write down this message and he sees the book of life with several other books and he opens the book and it's just like in heaven, the beam is the beam of judgment seat of God where believers are going to be judged based upon their work, where unbelievers would be judged based on rejecting Jesus Christ. And so he says to those of the Christians, the followers of Jesus that have served him, their works are being recorded. It hit me. I said, wow, wow, wow. What are you saying to me? God, Jesus is saying, Hey, I need you to get back to that place where you're spiritually vital because if I'm living in you and the love of God is in you, then I want to demonstrate that love to everyone around you. And so you've got a work to do. I've called you, I've given you skills, I've given you abilities, I've taken you through things, whatever it is, I'm going to use you for my glory. And so when we get to heaven, friends, we will be judged by the works that we've done with Jesus on his behalf. So what does that tell us as followers of Jesus? We got to get busy. We can't just come to church. We can't just do church. We got to be the church wherever we are at our job, in our neighborhood, in our families, in our community, wherever we are, we've got to be the church. But then he says, for some of those whose name wasn't found in that book, there'll be thrown into eternal fire. I said, wow, that's hell for the nonbeliever. For those who haven't said yes to Jesus, for those who haven't said, yes, I want you to be my Lord and my savior. He says, those when they see me face to face will be thrown into hell.

This is just the reality of what the Bible says. I promise. Don't shoot the messenger. He goes on to say, but I will acknowledge that name of the person before the father. And so he gives three promises. One, you're going to be victorious. Those who are victorious will be walking in white. There'll be an intimate with Jesus and fellowship with Jesus. There'll be clothed in righteousness and purity. And then your names would not be blotted out of the book of life. But then he goes on to say the last thing. There'll be acknowledged before my father and his angels in heaven. I love this part. I love this part because you know, as a man, we're not so affectionate at times. Huh? Right. We don't want to cry much. Kind of hard. This is what I found with Jesus is kind of saying, I just had a picture. I said, wow. He says, you'll be acknowledged before my father in heaven. You know, we pray to the father when we pray, don't we? Even though we know he's not a distant God, he yet seems distant. Can we be real? But we know he's not a distant God, but Jesus said, Hey, there's going to be a day when you live according to how I've lived, the standards that I've said, and you allow me to live my life in you and through you, there's going to be a day when you meet the father face to face. And that day I will tell them your name. I will say, Hey father, this is Joe. Hey father, this is Melinda. Hey father, this is Brian. Hey father, this is Brittany. Hey father, this is Gordon. Hey father, this is Jody. Hey. This is who this is in friends. It gave me a picture of my own daughter My daughter she's the oldest. She wasn't very touchy affectionate Kind of was like me a little bit. My wife's love language is quality time and mine is like acts of service and gifts So I would hug my daughter. Hey, come on

Get off me daddy What's wrong with you I birthed you She I don't want hugs And I had to remember so I said, you know what I'm gonna just affirm her I make knowledge. Hey, I love you, baby Good to see I love your shoes. They're awesome. You know what daddy's so proud of you for doing. Oh my goodness, baby You smell so good. Did you put on mama's perfume? Oh, you smell a good girl Look at you already five years old with perfume. This is amazing. I Just begin to affirm her and love on her and I gave her a distance but I noticed the shift in her She began to reciprocate it with affection She come back and she always hugged me. Daddy. Daddy. I love me daddy me daddy me daddy the best daddy and I'm like What you want? See honestly, she wants nothing She's just wanting to love me and it gave me a picture of what Jesus was saying You see when we get this chance to meet father the father face to face Jesus will be with us and he'll say hey This is will this is Jen. This is Nate. This is Jody. This is Brian. This is Brittany He'll he'll tell the father and all we're gonna want to do is say God. Thank you You're amazing. I love you. Thank you for being with me. Thank you for walking with me Thank you for helping me to get here. Thank you for taking me to cancer. Thank you for taking me to that loss Thank you for being with me God. I love you. I just want to worship you because I'm so grateful It's a beautiful picture Jesus will acknowledge us before the father in heaven He closed with verse 6 and he says whoever has ears Let them hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches The unwatched gate She saw this failed two times in history The soldier that dropped his helmet there was no strategy there was no cunningness to it He just it was a small moment that revealed an unguarded place That was enough Let me ask you the question today what gates have you opened or left unwatched in your life?

What gates have you open And left unwatched in your own life It's causing spiritual complacency That maybe have caused some spiritual contamination Well, you're not as close with Jesus as you used to be Maybe it's the things you've been listening to You've not guarded the gate of your ears. Maybe it's your eyes the things you've been watching You've not guarded the gate of your eyes Maybe because of those things is now the things you've been saying you haven't been guarding the gate of your mouth Maybe it's your marriage You haven't been caring for your spouse and serving them as Christ's love the church and respecting them as Christ would call you to Maybe it's your devotional life Haven't been Feeling the embers of prayer as much your prayer life has decreased. Maybe it's time in the word Like mine was at one point in my life You don't get in the word desire for it anymore, it's more duty than delight Maybe it's a relationship That you shouldn't be in you've held back on making the right decision Maybe it's a relationship that you should be in but you just need to do it, right get married perhaps Get marital counseling Maybe it's another relationship that you needed to repair and you've harbored bitterness and unforgiveness For a season and you need to get it right with God and that person whatever it is. Well, what? unwatched gate Have you left unguarded or that you've opened? Now has you in a place? spiritual complacency Remember friends Jesus did not send this message because he had given up on Sardis He sent the message as a warning and that warning was actually his grace His that was his grace that the wake-up the alarm was not a verdict on them. It was actually a rescue for them He wanted them to be rescued and get back to a place of spiritual vitality

Remember he said remember the word that you've received and you've heard the gospel. He said hold to it, hold fast to it, remember it, keep it, obey it, live it, practice it. He said that that's what you need to do to experience victory and repent of anything that's contaminating you. This is what Paul said in 2nd Corinthians 7. He said let us lay aside anything that is contaminating our body or our spirit and let us live out of holiness of fear and reverence for God. And friends, the world that we're in today will cause our lives spiritually to have some compromise, to have some complacency, and eventually to be contaminated to where we're still followers of Jesus but we're not as spiritually vital as we used to be. So maybe what gate you left open, what gate have you began to unwatch, that you need to say I'm listening to the alarm that Jesus has sounded today. I'm getting back on my post. If that's you today, we're gonna give you an opportunity to respond and so if you would, I want you to stand with me. I want you to stand with me all over this place if you're able, as we get ready to have some response time from our worship team. Listen, I want you to know we've all been here. Even me reading it, even me studying it, even me having to preach it, it's like, oh God, you're talking to me. But for some of you that are here today or maybe you're somewhere you didn't get to church today and you're just watching online, you're gonna watch this later, I want to give you a response. I've got two responses for you. The first response is this. The first response is this. For those of you who are not following Jesus, you heard the consequences. You don't want your name to be not in the book of life and eventually thrown away from the presence of God forever in a place called hell instead of a place called heaven. It's real and it is real and it will happen. God's Word is truth, I promise you. You feel it, you sense it in your own heart, in your own life. But if you're here today and you would say, Will, I have not made a decision to follow Jesus today, but I heard you talk about how he died on the cross for my sin. He rose from the grave and he did that so that I can have purpose in life and follow him and that he can make me the best person that he sees me to be. I don't want to live my own life anymore. I don't want to

go my own way anymore. I don't want to go astray. The way I was living, I want to follow Jesus and I want him to be Savior and Lord of my life. If that's you, I'm gonna give you an opportunity right now and at the count of three, I just want to lift your hands. If that's you all over this place, you say, Yes, I need to come to Jesus for the first time or I need to come back to him. I need to come back. If that's you, first time or come back. Raise your hand. One, two, three. If that's you, thank you, sir. Thank you, sir. If that's you, come on. I need to see you. Thank you. Thank you. I see you in the balcony, I love it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Come on, Manuel. Let's give it up for this. I love it. Thank you, sir. I love it. Thank you, ma'am. Thank you. I love this. This is awesome. This is awesome. This is what we do. This is what we do. Thank you, sir. So I want us to pray this prayer together. Let's pray like this. Dear Lord Jesus, thank you for dying on the cross for my sin and rising from the grave to give me an abundant life and an eternal life. Today, I turn away from my life and I follow you and only you for the rest of my life. Thank you for saving me and I choose to follow you. In your name I pray, amen and amen. Come on. Maybe you made that decision and you can click online if that's you. This is the second thing. This is the second thing. I'm going to talk to the believers. Can I do that? Can I do that? Can I do that? Some of us know if we're in a place of spiritual complacency. So the worship team is getting ready to sing. What I want to do right now is we're going to have a response time. The Bible says listen to what the Spirit is saying. So I believe the Holy Spirit is speaking to some of us in our spiritual journey that says you got to get back to it. Strengthen it. Get that vitality back. Come on. Pray. Pray for healing. Pray for the sick. Cast out devils. Believe God for the faith that he has in you. Come on. He wants us to get back to that place. If that's you today and you say, Will, that's me. I'm going to get back. I'm going to get back. We're going to invite you to respond here in just a moment. Can I have the Emmanuel prayer team come and join me? Can I have the prayer team come and join me right now? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Even if you're in the balcony. We're going to have a response time that I want you and

God to have a moment. This is not conjured up for us. It's for you. I want you and God to have a moment. So we got our prayer team here. We're going to have people in the balcony. We got people down here. And if that's you as they're beginning to worship, I want you to lean into what the Holy Spirit is saying to you in your life. There's something that God's saying, Yep, that's it. That's it. Remember, he wants to give you victory. He wants to give you victory. We've Gotta respond to what he's saying. If there's a level of repentance in your life, there's no condemnation there. It's just turning away from where you were to turn back to a God. And so as we get ready to worship, I want you to respond to God. Get out of your seat, get uncomfortable, and come and we're gonna be praying for you. We wanna minister with you. We wanna encourage you and come alongside of you. And so worship, can you please lead us? If that's you, come on. I want you to respond to what Jesus is saying. Respond to what he's saying today.