Hey, good morning, South! Good morning, I’m Steve, one of the pastor I don’t need that. Thanks. I’m one of the pastors here. It’s a privilege to bring you today’s message. For John It came as a random text one evening. He was about ready to go to bed. He’s in his mid thirties. He’s single, living alone, never been married.

Looks at his phone. Ding. Daniel, are you around? He texts back. Sorry, wrong number. I’m not Daniel. Oh, I’m sorry. I just needed to talk to someone tonight. I’ve been feeling a little down. What’s going on? He takes the bait. Oh, it’s Susie. I’m just, and she goes on to explain her situation and they begin texting one another.

And over the coming weeks, the texts are more and more often. And John finds himself attracted to Susie. Susie. And then the day comes where Susie sends him this little graph. She says, I don’t know if you’re into investing or anything, but look at what my investments have done. Wow, this graph that shows numbers growing and growing.

How did you do that? John texts back. Oh, she said, it’s just this company that takes crypto and they have an app, they have an online platform. Here’s the link if you’re interested, click. He’s interested by now. By now he trusts Susie and he gets on the app, and in his testimony he says, I even Googled that app to see if it was legit, and I didn’t really find anything about it, but I didn’t find anything negative about it.

He downloads the app, and he tries it. A thousand bucks. That’s it. He looks at his app. Wow. There’s my money a week or two later. It’s starting to grow. Ooh, this is nice. And they’re still texting and she’s showing him graphs of her investments and how they’ve grown over the weeks and the months.

And he’s getting excited. So 10, 000, wow. He gets a report back. This is my money and look at how it’s growing. A few weeks later, 50, 000. Now, he ends up 100, 000 investing in this app, this platform, until one day he goes to open the app and it’s gone. And he tries to text Susie and she’s gone. They call it a pig fattening scam because they don’t get you just once, but they fatten you up.

You keep giving and investing. And according to the records that I read this week, 75 billion in crypto has been scammed away from people on things like this. In today’s story, and we’re going through Revelation, we’re on the last the last church, the Church of Laodicea there’s a scam going on, and Jesus is gonna reveal that.

And the sad thing about Laodicea is that there’s nothing, He has nothing good to say about this church. He didn’t listen to my mom. My mom used to say, if you don’t have anything good to say, don’t say anything at all, right? Jesus didn’t have anything good to say about Laodicea. Let’s talk about where it is.

Of course, all of these churches in modern day Turkey. Here’s Laodicea. We’ve gone around that horseshoe. You’ve seen this map almost every sermon founded in the third century BC. It’s located a mile south of the Lycus river, 10 miles northwest of Colossae, five miles south of Heropolis.

We’ll just zoom in the map a little bit so you can see even better. So here are the three. Towns that we’re talking about. Laodicea is in the middle. It’s at the crossroads of different roads. There’s a river nearby. It becomes This big, industrious, wealthy, popular city. Here’s a couple pictures of what it looks like today.

You can still see the ruins of Laodicea.

It was around A. D. 60 when an earthquake And there was one around the night, 80, 19 or 20, but the one in 60 was pretty devastating. The city was in shambles. Rome offered to help them rebuild their city and they turned it down. We don’t need your help. And they didn’t, it was a very wealthy city and they rebuilt it without help.

Now you may have. Heard of Laodicea in some of other your Bible reading. Look at Colossians three with me, sorry, four. So it’s the letter to Colossi, Paul, the Colossians, Epaphras, who’s one of you and a servant of Christ. Jesus sends his greetings. He has great zeal for you and those in Laodicea and Heropolis.

There’s those three cities again that we talked about. Now, Laodicea was known for three things. First of all, it was famous as a wealthy city. It was a prominent center for banking and commerce. It was very wealthy. Second, they were known for their glossy black wool that they used to make clothes and textiles and carpets.

Third, it was known for their flourishing medical school and they had, Discovered or invented some kind of a powder that could be used as an eye salve, and it was exported worldwide. You also need to know about their water system, and then I can tell you about the letter that, that they received. Let’s get a picture of the hot springs in In Heropolis, beautiful, right?

This is a modern day picture, but five miles away, there are all these springs, hot springs. And the town of Laodicea decides to build an aqueduct. Here’s a picture of the ruins of that aqueduct. So they’re piping this hot spring water about five miles. Of course, if you’ve ever tasted hot spring water it’s not the best.

And then it’s going through this aqueduct for five miles. So apparently some visitors, when they would visit Laodicea and drink the water, they would spit it out or vomit it out, right? On, in contrast to that, here’s the water at Colossi. Fed from Mount Cadmus there’s rain, there’s snow, it’s nice, clean, pure water.

So now that you know those things about Laodicea, listen to the letter that they get as a church there. To the angel of Laodicea, write, These are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the ruler of God’s creation. I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other.

So because you are lukewarm, I’m about to spit you out of my mouth. You say, I am rich. I have acquired wealth, and I do not need a thing. But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire so that you can be rich, and white clothes to wear so that you can cover your shameful nakedness.

And ISAB to put on your eyes so that you can see. Those whom I love, I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest and repent. Here I am. I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person and they with me. To the one who is victorious, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne just as I was victorious and sat down with my father on his throne.

Whoever has ears to hear. Let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. Wow, what an indictment to this church. You’re lukewarm. Now normally lukewarm water doesn’t sound very good unless you’re going to be baptized two weeks from now. Then it sounds great. I used to hear this text taught this way.

God hates lukewarm Christians and if you’re not hot for Him, He wants to spit you out of His mouth. It induced guilt and shame when I was in high school, reading those words and hearing those taught, and in study for this message, I learned that the word lukewarm in the ancient world is not a synonym for wishy-washy, or lukewarmness or indifference.

It simply means tepid. It’s not hot and it’s not cold. So what is Jesus saying? He says, I wish you were either one or the other. He’s not just saying, I wish you were hot. He said, I wish you were hot or cold. Why is that? It’s as if he’s saying, if you were hot, I could do something with you. Like the hot springs would provide medicinal purposes, maybe healing, or I wish you were cold, because cold water provides refreshing and nourishment for people.

Kind of like the water from Colossae. Okay. But you’re lukewarm and because you’re not either one, I really can’t do anything with you. So in this text, lukewarm means something like this. You’re so prosperous and supposedly so self sufficient that you’re completely out of fellowship with me. They had become useless to Jesus and to his kingdom.

You I think this caught people by surprise, at least according to Jesus letter, because they said, hey, we’re rich. We’ve acquired wealth. We don’t need a thing. Who’s he talking to? These are people that don’t need to beg. They own their own businesses. They’re caught up in the culture of the day where you acquire more and more.

You can almost hear them saying, we used to have you, Jesus, but now we have wealth.

We don’t need a thing anymore. That’s the attitude, at least, that we hear. Does that sound familiar to you? Like any country you might know that might say something like that? They believed, possibly, that their wealth was a sign of how well they were doing spiritually. But Jesus said, actually, it’s the opposite.

You’re wretched pitiful. Poor, blind, naked. I wonder if those people in Laodicea hearing this letter would say, what? That’s not us, is it? It’s almost as if Jesus is saying, there’s a scam going on in the church. Something that isn’t what it appears to be, and it’s you. A little over 20 years ago in February of 2004, Penny and I had the opportunity.

to go with a number of other pastor couples to Hawaii. It was a workshop put on by Wayne Cordero. This is Wayne, founding pastor of New Hope Christian Fellowship in Honolulu. This is us in our 40s walking in the park. Yes, I had a little hair back then. Not as much as Alex, he’s in his 40s too, but.

It was supposed to be a workshop where we learned about Wayne’s church and how to be a pastor. The first night they fed us a nice meal, they sent us off to our rooms, and then he said, I want to meet you in the morning at this certain 30. Wear some shorts and some tennis shoes. This is a picture of a banyan tree.

I hadn’t seen those until I was in this park and it was still dark that morning. And Wayne said, okay, here’s the deal. There were maybe 25 of us or something. Just the guys were there. The wives got to sleep in that morning. He said, here’s what we’re going to do. This sidewalk that goes all the way around the park is about a mile loop.

We’re going to run a couple of miles. Okay I had been playing racquetball once a week with my friends. A good 90 minutes, hard sweating, heart pounding. I figured I’m probably in pretty good shape, right? And off we go. It’s not a race and he said you could walk if you want, but many of my friends were there and I was started and the first mile went okay.

We ran around the trees like this homeless people sleeping in the park. And we get about halfway around the second lap. And I’m, my, my chest is hurting. My heart is pounding. My legs are hurting. And some of my friends are just jogging around and I’m thinking, Oh, I don’t know if I can make it. And I can picture where I was on that sidewalk when I felt like I heard Jesus say to me, you’re not in as good a shape as you thought you were.

And then he said, And you’re not in as good a shape Spiritually as you think you are

That was a wake up call for me Starting in that after that workshop. I started learning about soul care about Growing about spiritual formation about becoming more like Christ. It was a big huge wake up call for me And I think This letter was probably a wake up call for them as well. You’re the opposite of what you think you are.

Maybe they’d slipped into religion, where you do things because you’re expected to do them, or it’s the right thing to do, or it’s tradition, or maybe to earn God’s favor. John Eldredge says religion gives the impression of having Christ while it inoculates you from experiencing the real thing.

Jesus hits them with a dose of reality. I think Dallas Willard is the one that says, reality is what we run into when we’re wrong. Like an x ray or an MRI, it shows what’s really going on inside, and Jesus assessment is accurate. He’s saying, you know what repulses me is not your wealth necessarily.

But it’s the attitude of self sufficiency and your lack of awareness. That’s what repulses Jesus. You say I’m rich, but you’re actually poor. Listen to these contrasts between what they thought they were and what Jesus thought they were. Between what they see and what Jesus sees, between the wealth and affluence of their city and their own spiritual bankruptcy.

It’s like he’s saying, you need some of that eye salve. so that you can really see who you are. What’s Jesus attitude towards them in this letter? Does it sound like he’s mad or judging or angry at them? We don’t know for sure, but I don’t think their sin is a problem to him. I don’t think our sin is a problem to Jesus.

He’s forgiven all of our sins. Our sin is a problem for us. And maybe, I’m guessing that he’s sad when he writes this letter because they’re missing out on life. The life that they could be having with him. So he offers a remedy for them, but before we get to the remedy, I want to ask this question. How might we be just like them?

In what ways are we poor? Maybe brainwashed by the world’s wealth. In what ways are we naked? Maybe not clothing ourselves with the righteousness of Christ, and instead with our own identity, like our work, our sexuality our accomplishments. In what ways are we blind? Where we don’t see the needs of those around us.

Or maybe we’re, we ignore our own faults, but we’re quick to point out the faults in everyone else around us. Maybe we come on a Sunday, we get a glimpse of God, and who He is, and who I am, and by the time we hit Broadway, we’ve already forgotten what we’ve heard. For sure, we would Measure up with them in terms of being wealthy people.

If you make, did you know, if you make 40, 000 a year, you’re in the top 3 percent in the world. Okay. That means if we picked a hundred people from countries around the globe, brought them into this room and 97 of them would be here. And you and two others would be on the stage because you’re the wealthy one.

We’re the wealthy ones in the world. Over 70 percent of the world lives on less than 10 a day. When we think of ourselves as self sufficient, we become useless or repulsive to God. That’s the message that I hear. It’s because self sufficient people think they don’t need anything, including Jesus. So I wonder what a letter to us might sound like.

Letter to the church in Littleton. And this is to me as well. So many of these things Jesus has spoken to me. I know you. Your bank accounts, your nice house worth over a half a million dollars, your mountain home, your nice cars, your college fund, your IRAs, your 401Ks, your 403Bs. You can eat pretty much whatever you want.

You can wear pretty much whatever you want. You can drink pretty much whatever you want. You can travel wherever, whenever. Your kids are in a good school of your choice. When you’re injured seriously, you get first class medical help within minutes. You take a couple hours out of your week to show up on Sunday at church.

You smile and look nice. You greet those around you when it’s time to do that, and then you go through most of your week without even thinking about me. But so many of you neglect the poor around you. So many of you don’t even know the neighbors that live next to you. So many of you live just like the world around you.

The amount of time you spend on your phone, it’s no different than your neighbor. The time and energy that you spend worrying about finances and retirement is repulsive to me. You invest way more in car payments than you do in your local church. You love the idea of sending missionaries, but you don’t support any of them financially.

You go to church and you enjoy all the staff there, but you don’t help pay their salaries, which was my plan for how they would earn their living. You think your money is yours to do with what you want, but you forget that it’s really mine. I’ve entrusted you with it to manage it on my behalf. It seems like you’re never content with what you have.

Always wanting more, the next experience, the next gadget, the newest fashion, a better spouse, a better church. And as a result of all of this, it can easily make you feel like you don’t need me anymore. You pretty much do life without me. And I miss you. And you’re missing out on life. I don’t know. I don’t know.

All I know is that he’s spoken to me about a lot of those things. And if that makes you squirm a little bit, imagine the church in Laodicea and how they squirmed when they heard his message about vomiting them. That’s really the word, vomiting them out of their mouth, out of his mouth. So what is the remedy?

He does give some solutions here for them. The first one is simply to repent, which is to make a change. Start believing the truth. Believe the doctor, believe the MRI, the x ray, believe the spirit of Jesus when he says, this is who you really are. Those whom I love, I rebuke and discipline, so be earnest and repent.

What does repentance look like? It looks like confessing our arrogance and our pride and our self sufficiency And inviting Jesus back into an intimate relationship with us. Do you feel like you need to repent today of something? Second thing I notice here is, I’m calling it releasing some of our money.

He says, buy from me gold refined in the fire, so that you can be rich. And white clothes and ISAV, all of those. He’s saying, come to me. I’m the source of all of those things. Now why would he say, buy from me instead of receive from me? He could have just said, ask me and I’ll give you all these things, but he intentionally says, buy, and I think it’s because he’s tapping into their dependency on wealth.

Giving some money away helps break our addiction to it. And it begins to loosen its grip on us. We love to sing, I lay it all down. I surrender all, I give it all to you. But if we’re not actually giving any of our money to God in any way It almost seems like a scam like hypocrisy, doesn’t it?

At least when we give something, it’s a symbol. He’s not saying give it all away, but give something as a symbol of having given everything to Jesus. And when we let go of our stuff, when we become more generous, we begin to see more clearly who we are and how needy a people we actually are. He doesn’t say we shouldn’t have gold or we shouldn’t buy things.

He just says, excuse me, he just says he’s the source of all of it. Jesus was the one that says life does not consist in the abundance of your possessions. Why? Because abundance clouds our reality. And so Jesus says, do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth. Where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.

But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. You want to know where your heart really is? Look at your bank statement. Look at your credit card statement. You still have a checkbook?

Look at your checkbook register, right? Looking at that is like the x ray. It actually shows you where your heart is. We may say our heart is with God and his kingdom, but where does it show up in there? Jesus says where your treasure is, that’s where your heart is. I met someone recently just in the last couple of weeks.

He said his goal was to give more to God than in taxes to the government. What a great goal and what a statement of priority. Yeah, give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, but not a penny more. And give to God what is God’s. There’s a story of a wealthy woman. Maybe she grew up in Cherry Hills.

I don’t know. It’s just a story, right? But she gets to heaven. She meets Peter and he says, welcome to heaven. I’d love to take you to your mansion. And they walk down the streets of gold, and there’s this beautiful mansion here and there, and they keep walking and walking. Finally, they’re getting to the edge of town, and there’s just this little shack.

She says, surely this can’t be mine. And he says, we did the best we could with what you sent up here.

Imagine being in heaven someday. Imagine being in heaven someday, and Jesus says, come here. I want you to meet Nicole. You don’t know Nicole, but I want you to meet her. Do you remember when you gave to South Fellowship and they were able to hire two student directors? Nicole grew up in a home in Littleton and where they didn’t talk about Jesus, but her friend went to South.

And one day her friend invited Nicole to South youth group. And that’s where she met me. And now she’s in heaven. Because you gave. Jesus says, I’d like you to meet Joseph. Joseph was a little kid, went to Sunday school at South. He was squirrely. He didn’t know the Bible stories, but you were in there teaching in his class.

And he came month after month, year after year, and eventually Joseph came to know me. And he met Catherine, his wife, at South. And they have three beautiful children. And now they’re all up here in heaven. Because you gave of your time to serve in Sunday school. And then Jesus pulls you over here. I want you to meet Ali.

Ali grew up in a Muslim home. His family moved to Denver. And do you remember Hannah and Neil and how you supported them in their ministry to Muslims? In Denver. Through their friendship, and over time, Ali came to know me. And now he’s in heaven, because you gave. See, let me tell you something about giving.

Giving is not something God wants from you. It’s something He wants for you. He doesn’t need your money. But giving does something to us. We become different kind of people when we give. I see similar themes to this letter in 1 Timothy 6. I’ll show you those verses. Command those who are rich in this present world, that would be us, command those who are rich in this world not to be arrogant, Or put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain.

But to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. In this way, they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age. Sounds a lot like what Jesus was saying.

So that they may take hold of life and death. That is truly life. So part of the remedy is just releasing some of our money. It’s good for us, and it begins to change who we are. Jesus is offering them this exchange. Their poverty for pure gold. Their nakedness for white garments. Their blindness for a healing eye salve.

How about you? Do you need to release some of your Money today. The third part of the remedy is to simply listen for his voice. Here I am. I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice. It doesn’t, interesting, it doesn’t say, if anyone hears my knock. Don’t you love this picture? Jesus knocking at the door.

Many of us have seen it. There’s no handle on the outside, right? It’s on the inside. But you know what? I used to see this picture thinking this was certainly an invitation for people outside of the faith that aren’t a part of a church, but I’m wrong. This text, this illustration was written to church people.

People that claim to follow Jesus, and he’s on the outside. If anyone hears my voice, what does his voice sound like? It’s usually quiet. Often it comes as a thought into our mind. It will always be consistent with scripture, and it often is personal. I wonder if he’s speaking to you this morning about something.

And he uses all kinds of things to get our attention. Nature, conversations with other people two people having a conversation here, and suddenly Jesus says, what they’re saying is for you. Music, circumstances. And whenever he speaks to us, it’s out of love. Remember he says, those I love, I rebuke and discipline.

Are you ready to hear his voice today? And then following that, the last part of the remedy is to re invite him into our lives, into our daily lives. If anyone. Here’s my voice and opens the door. I will come come in and eat with that person. Remember the old King James, I will come in and sup with that person.

The word, the small word from which we have our word supper, right? In the ancient near east and in the Jewish world, a meal was a sign of affection and confidence and intimacy. Jesus wasn’t Pharisees of just hanging around pagans and sinners. The problem was he was. Eating with them, interacting. In the Greek world, breakfast was a hard piece of bread dipped in wine.

Lunch was a simple meal you might grab at the marketplace during your workday. But the supper was when work was over. It’s time to laugh and relax and enjoy fellowship. And Jesus says, that’s what I want for you. Every day, please let me in. That’s why I say re, re invite Him into our daily life. Because life, we get busy and all of a sudden, where’s Jesus?

I’ve forgotten about Him. I hadn’t thought about Him for a day or three. Re invite Him back in. He’s always ready. Oswald Chambers says, Our only task is to maintain a vital connection with Jesus Christ Seeing that nothing interferes with it.

So what is the remedy that Jesus gives us? Let me just remind you. Repent, that is turn, change. Change your thinking. The world says you need more stuff, gather it all for yourself, set yourself up for a great retirement, don’t worry about others. Change, repent. I’m sorry, Jesus, I’ve been believing that stuff too long.

I’ve I’ve been brainwashed by our world. Release some of our money. You decide with Jesus who to give it to and where, but put some of it into kingdom stuff. That’s that, that ends up in heaven someday.

Listen for his voice. He’s probably been talking to some of us this morning. And likely if you’re listening, you may hear his voice every day this week and then re invite him into your life. Every day. I don’t know if this message might be a little bit of a wake up call like what he said to me trying to jog in Hawaii that day.

Um, maybe it is. Maybe it is. Listen to him. Respond to him. The, you know the simple phrase, if nothing changes. If we walk out of here today and say it was a nice message. And nothing in our life or our spending or our time changes, it’s likely that we won’t change. Yeah there’s scams going on all over the place.

Jesus says sometimes we aren’t even who we appear to be in the church. Let’s take an honest look at who we really are and respond to Jesus. Now I wasn’t able to cover everything in this text. And maybe I made you squirm a little bit. In either case, there’s a podcast. And Alex and Aaron will answer all your questions and deal with any squirminess that came up from this message, right?

That’s their job. That happens on Thursday. But in today’s text, Jesus is shining his light on scammers in the church. People who aren’t what they appear to be. And it’s so easy to fool ourselves. Let’s stop thinking that we don’t need Him. Because we do. He’s knocking. He’s close. He wants that intimate moment.

interactive relationship with us. And he’s a gentleman. He never forces himself on us. And when we do open the door, he’s not going to force you to change or embarrass you or scold you or make fun of you.

But the self support, the self sufficient person says, I don’t need anybody. I don’t need church. I don’t need to be in church. I can do whatever with, I want to with my time, with my gifts, with my money. And Jesus said, those kinds of people. Make me sick to my stomach. The reality is, apart from Jesus, we can do nothing.

We can do nothing. So I’ve got three slides with some statements on it. Let’s stand and say these together. Just read them with me if you feel like reading them. Let’s start with this one. Lord, I need you. I need you when I drive, I need you when I work, I need you when I play, I need you when I sleep, I need you when I eat.

Lord, I need you. I need you in my marriage, I need you in my planning, I need you in my spending, I need you in my parenting. Lord, I need you. I need your presence, I need your wisdom. I need your healing. I need your comfort. I need your peace. Every hour of every day. I need you.