The Excluded Christ

I think this is the 11th Sunday that I've been with you this year, and I was one Sunday in August with you, and it looks as if I'm becoming part of the furniture up here. But I do thank you for your love and for your kindness in inviting me to come and minister God's Word to you and also share in the joy and in the blessing of your worship of God. Now, for the benefit of some of you who weren't able to be here last week, we looked at Acts 16 and saw that conversion to Christ is God opening the human heart to respond to the gospel, the invitation of the gospel to repent of our sin and to believe in Christ. Today we want to look at Revelation 3 verse 20 and see that conversion is the sinner opening the door of his or her heart to Christ. That is the balance of the Bible. And if we would only just keep preaching the Bible, we would have balanced Christianity. There is no contradiction at all between divine sovereignty and human responsibility in conversion and salvation. So I'm going to ask you again to stand and Follow with me in the reading of scripture as we read from Revelation 3 and verses 14 on to the end of the chapter, verse 22. Revelation 3, verse 14. And to the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write, these things says the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God. I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I could wish you were cold or hot. So then, because you are lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of my mouth. Because you say, I am rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing, and do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked, I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, that you may be rich, and white garments, that you may be clothed, that the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed. and anoint your eyes with eyesalve that you may see. As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten. Therefore, be zealous and repent. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him and he with me. To him who overcomes, I will grant to sit with me on my throne, as I also overcame and sat down with my Father on his throne. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches." God bless the reading of his holy word. Please be seated. Let us pray. Our gracious God and Father in heaven, we thank you for your presence with us through the Sunday School teaching hour, and now again with us here in this worship service in which the whole family of God, young and old, are gathered together. And our Father, we pray that you will Help us to remember afresh that the ground on which we are seated is holy ground. And help us, therefore, to be caught up with your awesome presence, and to listen to your inspired word, and to hear the still, small voice of Jesus Christ speaking through the voice of the preacher. We ask it that Jesus Christ may be exalted and lifted up and draw all men and women, boys and girls, to himself, either in saving faith or in sanctifying grace. We ask it in his name and for his sake, who loved us and gave himself for us. Amen. Our meditation this morning is on the excluded Christ, and you will find the words of my text in Revelation 3, verses 20 to 22. Behold, or take notice, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with me. To him who overcomes, I will grant to sit with me on my throne, as I also, Abe, overcame and sat down with my father on his throne. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches." Except for John 3.16, I do not think there is any other text in the Bible that is used more often in evangelistic ministry than this one. The English Puritan and non-conformist John Flavel loved this text so much that he preached a series of fourteen excellent evangelistic sermons on it. Some, however, who emphasize only the sovereignty of God in salvation, believe that it should not be used in preaching or counseling the unsaved, because it is a statement that comes in a letter addressed to a church. These are words for Christians, they say, and not for the non-Christian. But that is to overlook the crucial fact that the congregation concerned, the Church of Laodicea, was a church only in name. Moreover, Our Lord's appeal is not to the body of this nominal congregation, but to each individual member. It is addressed to anyone who hears His voice and opens the door. So, it is a picture of Christ standing outside the door of someone's life, not because they have pushed him out, but because they have never invited him in, in the first place. Revelation 3.20 then, in essence, highlights the difference between real Christianity and spurious Christianity, and it reveals Christ in all the glory of His patient, loving condescension to sinners. With that in mind, let's see from our text in the first place that nominal Christianity is impersonal, and lukewarm. The door in verse 20 is obviously the door of the human heart or soul to which admission can only be gained by the permission of the individual. And that is why Christ is outside. He has been denied access. For some people He stands outside because they want nothing to do with Him. They have made a conscious decision to keep him out. But that was not the case with these people in Laodicea. They were not anti-Christian. Rather, they were people who actually thought they were Christians. They were churchgoers, and in all probability, the adult children of the first converts some forty years before. They had had time to grow up, you see, in the church and become members of the church and would have been mortally offended if anyone had questioned their Christianity. Yet, here is Jesus saying that in reality he has never been admitted into their hearts. that to all intents and purposes he is still a stranger standing outside. How had that happened? Well, the letter tells us, doesn't it? Jesus says, verse 15, I know your works, that is, the deeds that reveal who you are and how and what you think. that you are neither cold nor hot. I could wish you were cold or hot. And the word cold there means I wish you were icy cold. And the word hot means I wish you were boiling hot. So as far as our Lord is concerned, if our spirituality or our relationship with Him is not at boiling point, then we might as well be icy cold or frigid. Spiritual lukewarmness that keeps him at a distance is thoroughly insulting and nauseating. A Christianity that doesn't demand very much of us sickens Jesus Christ intensely. Verse 16, So then, Because you are lukewarm, and neither icy cold nor boiling hot, I will spew you out of my mouth." Literally, I am about to spit you out of my mouth. Now, there are many things, dear friends, about which we may be moderate. We may be moderate in our politics, in our dress, in our eating, and so on. But there is one thing you can't be moderate about, and that is your relationship to Jesus Christ, who is God in the flesh. For he tells us in verse 14 that he is the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God. Now, the term Amen means, or denotes, reliability. For Christ's words, as God incarnate, are God's words. They are therefore to be taken seriously, he says, as the words of the faithful and true witness. God is not a man, scripture says, that he should lie. Again, Jesus calls himself, in verse 16, the beginning of the creation of God, which cannot mean that he was the first thing that God created, that before God created the world and anything else, he created his Son, as the Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses assert. That cannot be the meaning. because the rest of Scripture tells us that Jesus is God incarnate, and God is eternal. So Jesus cannot have a beginning. No, Scripture must always be interpreted by Scripture, and in particular, particularly by John 1 verse 1. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made through him." Now listen, "...and without him nothing was made that was made." Now who is this Word? A little further down John says, "...and the Word became flesh." He became Jesus. and dwelt among us. And we beheld his glory, the glory as the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." So John 1 says unequivocally that Jesus is the creator of everything. He is not a creature. The term beginning, as it refers here in Revelation 3, must be interpreted as an active noun and not a passive noun, meaning the beginner or originator of creation, not the beginning of creation. That is the Christ who stands outside the door of any sinner's heart. whether they go to church or not. How can we be moderate or spiritually tepid to Him who is our great Creator? Now, our Lord does not leave us in ignorance as to why these churchgoers in Laodicea were lukewarm. They were self-satisfied. They felt no need of Jesus. Verse 17, you say, I am rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing. And do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked. And of course, when it came to material things, they were quite right. Laodicea was renowned for its prosperity. Its citizens were so wealthy, you know, that when in A.D. 60 the city was destroyed by an earthquake, they promptly rebuilt it without applying to Rome for the customary subsidy. Prosperity oozed from every business venture, and the satisfaction that this affluence produced had spiritually anesthetized them. They had become spiritually smug and self-satisfied. Wealth, friends, is dangerous for the soul. It makes people spiritually complacent. It certainly made these Laodiceans satisfied with their religious life. Oh, they gave their bit to the church, they did their part in the church, and I have no doubt, they sanctified the wealth that they were gaining with suitable prayers of thanksgiving to God. But they had very little else to pray about, for as far as they were concerned, they didn't need anything else from God. I am rich, they said. have become wealthy and have need of nothing. Our Lord's letter must have come as a rude awakening informing them of their real spiritual condition. Verse 17, And you do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked. That is how Christ views every nominal Christian who is not truly committed to Him and not passionate about his or her relationship to Him. They are wretched, they are miserable, they are poor, dying without hope, for in themselves they have no grounds on which to ask God for the forgiveness of their sins. Again, they are morally naked because they have no righteousness of their own to make them fit to stand and be in the presence of God in heaven. And they are spiritually blind because they can neither see the poverty of their soul nor the danger of their eternal destruction. Do any of us fit this picture of a nominal Christian who goes to church. A churchgoer who is spiritually lukewarm and half-hearted in their commitment to Jesus Christ. Well, Jesus is warning us here in this letter that that kind of complacent, superficial Christianity is spurious, because in reality it keeps him outside the door of your life. It's a situation that cannot go on. Either we have to take action to rectify it, or he will take action to spit the tepid churchgoer out of his mouth. And what advice does the Son of God give to rectify the spiritual contradiction or inconsistency. He says, verse 18, I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in fire, that is spiritual gold, that you may be rich, that is rich toward God in the things that are precious and valuable and highly esteemed and pleasing to God. And I counsel you, he says, to buy white garments that you may be clothed, that the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed. And I counsel you to anoint your eyes with eyesalve that you may see. Now, we must be careful here not to misunderstand our Lord. Salvation cannot be bought. Our Lord is simply using language that business people like the people in Laodicea would understand. Salvation, we know from all of Scripture, is the free gift of God received by faith without any works. And Jesus likens himself here to a rich man who is willing and ready to supply all our spiritual needs if only we will open the door and let him into our life. It's a gracious offer to sinners that is in the same vein as the prophet Isaiah, as God, through the prophet Isaiah, in Isaiah 55, verse 1, says, Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters, and you who have no money, come buy and eat. Yes, come buy milk and wine without money and without price. I say, what a magnanimous offer Jesus is making to spiritual paupers. Though we have ignored his entreaties and his offer to save us, he says, verse 19, as many as I love, I rebuke and chasten. Indeed, some of his persistent knocks are the knocks we get in life to get our attention. That's the first lesson we learn from our text. Nominal Christianity is impersonal and lukewarm. Secondly, real Christianity is personal fellowship with Christ Himself. As our Creator, Jesus Christ is the owner of the house in which we live. He is the architect who designed it, and He is the builder who made it. We are only the tenants who live in the house, and it would be perfectly within His rights to force His way in. Instead, He knocks gently, and He speaks lovingly. He wants to come into our innermost being, not as some temporary guest, but as a welcome resident to enjoy our company and our devotion forever. That is what our Lord is seeking when He says, Behold, take notice. I stand at the door and knock. And, you know, it's the same picture of Jesus that is to be found in the four Gospels. Why did the Son of God leave heaven to come down to earth? What was it that he supremely wanted? Was it to win the admiration of people and give us a good example to follow? Absolutely not. It was to save people from their sins and live in them as their savior, their helper, and their friend. In Luke 19, we have the lovely story of the conversion of Zacchaeus, who was a dishonest tax collector. And when Jesus came to his town, the town of Jericho, this man climbed a tree so that he could get a good look of this man he had heard all about. And as our Lord passed by, he looked up at Zacchaeus in the tree and said, Zacchaeus, make haste and come down. For today I must stay at your house." Jesus wanted to come into his house. Now some in the crowd murmured, saying, He has gone to be a guest with a man who is a sinner. But Jesus counted, saying, Today Salvation has come to this house, meaning to this man. That's the picture of conversion, you see. It's the same picture found in John 15, with a different metaphor, the metaphor of the vine. And Jesus says, I am the true vine, and you are the branches. Listen, he who abides in me, and I in him, bears much fruit. Conversion is union with Christ. It's living with Christ and in Christ. And our Lord speaks again of this divine indwelling in John 14 when he says, If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him. And listen, and we will come to him and make our home with him. Well, it's the same fellowship offered by Jesus in Revelation 3, verse 20. Friends, whatever your theological persuasions, if you are hard on divine sovereignty in conversion, this is also the Word of God. This is what is conversion. And when our Lord died, when he rose again, and when he ascended into heaven, the essence of Christianity did not change. Though he is in heaven, conversion, salvation, is union with Christ. It is Christ indwelling my life and your life. Thus Paul says in Galatians, Christ lives in me. And he assures the Colossians that the mystery of the gospel is Christ in you, the hope of glory. His prayer for the Ephesians is, may Christ dwell in your heart by faith. And John in his epistle can say, by this we know he abides in us by the Spirit He has given us. The Laodiceans, however, were blind to the fact that God in Christ was lovingly seeking to enter the door of their hearts and share the riches of His divine life with them. Personal fellowship, spiritual fellowship, and communion with Christ indwelling us is, I say, the essence of conversion, salvation, and Christianity. The third lesson to be learned from our text is that real Christianity begins with hearing the voice of Christ, just as we saw last week with Lydia. When our Lord says, if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, Do you see he is making a connection between the two things, hearing his voice and opening the door? But what does it mean to hear the voice of Christ? Well, obviously it means that his word has to come to us physically. We have to physically receive Christ's word either through our ears or through our eyes. Thus Paul says in Romans 10, how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? No one can hear the voice of Christ without hearing or reading his word. But friends, that's not enough, is it? For many have audibly and visually come in contact with his word. and not heard his voice. And so, something else is needed. And that was the case with these Laodiceans and with many others today. We listen to sermons, we read the Bible and Christian books, but we still keep Christ outside the door. His word has no convicting and converting power, because it has only been heard physically or visually, but never felt spiritually. And once again, Scripture makes this clear. In John 5, our Lord says to his disciples, Most assuredly I say to you, the hour is coming, and now is. When the dead, the spiritually dead, will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. That is, they will respond spiritually. They will be quickened to respond to the Word. Now, what hour is Jesus talking about that now is? And the answer is the day of Pentecost. For at the end of his ministry, multitudes heard him preach, but they remained spiritually dead. But on the day of Pentecost, in a crowd of five or six thousand, three thousand people heard not simply the voice of Peter preaching the first Christian sermon, but they heard the voice of the Son of God and were saved. Jesus, by the power of His Spirit, stood at the door of their hearts and knocked. And as they heard His voice, Luke says, they were cut to the heart and said, Men and brethren, what shall we do? We know Peter is right. We are lawless men. We have wickedly crucified the Son of God. What shall we do? They heard the voice of Jesus through the preaching of Peter. Others heard that same voice, but they made no response. But on this day, there were those who heard the voice of Jesus and were saved. And you know, the apostles prayed that this power would also accompany their preaching. Paul tells the Thessalonians, our gospel came to you not simply with words, but also with power, with the Holy Spirit, and with deep conviction. The word of God on its own is a dead letter. But when it is spoken in the power of the Holy Spirit, people hear the very voice of Jesus and are convicted of their need to respond. That is what happens whenever the Word of God is faithfully preached. Some will listen, and they will be predisposed to hear nothing more but the voice of the preacher. But there will be others in the same audience who hear something more. Something that knocks on the very door of their soul and speaks with quickening power. The still, small voice of Jesus that speaks with divine authority that cannot be dismissed as the voice of a preacher can be. Behold, says Jesus, I stand at the door. And the preposition at means right up. at the door. He stands on the threshold, and His offer of the gospel is made personally, not from a distance. As the Son of God, He might have remained on His throne in heaven and waited in hope for us to come to Him for salvation. Instead, He has made the long journey from earth to heaven, or from heaven to earth. And the verb to stand is in the perfect tense, which means a past action that is continuing to have effects. So he is saying, I stand, I came to the door, and I'm still standing at the door. And the verb to knock is a present tense. For He has not only some time ago come to the door, and He is not only still standing at the door, but He is continually knocking. Now, I know I kept Him waiting a long time. I was under conviction for at least two or three years before I opened the door. And I wonder how long it has been that you have kept Him waiting. It seems a strange thing to say that a puny human being can keep the Son of God waiting, but that's to his credit and it's to our shame. And I say real Christianity begins with hearing the tender, loving voice of Jesus and responding to it. Fourthly and finally, our text tells us, and this is a beautiful thing, real Christianity is dining and overcoming with Christ. When we, by the gracious and effectual calling of Jesus Christ, open the door of our hearts, life is not going to be easy. To live in fellowship with Christ and to serve Him day by day is going to arouse the hostility of our three enemies, the world, the flesh, and the devil. To become the friend of Christ is to become the enemy of the world. Again, our endeavours to deny the lusts of the flesh are going to be strongly resisted And yet again, the devil will not passively give up his slaves who no longer want to serve him. Indeed, he will fight with all his might to keep them or to get them back. Scripture therefore urges us, fight the good fight of faith to which you were called. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Walk in the Spirit and you will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. Our Lord said, in this world you will have tribulation or trouble, but take heart, I have overcome the world. And so I want to say today, however great the opposition, with Christ in our hearts, beloved, we are more than conquerors. That's what our text is saying. I don't know if you see the connection there between verse 20 and verse 21. It speaks of dining. or feasting, if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him and he with me." The guest we invite in suddenly becomes the true host, and his dining with us becomes our dining with him, because in reality the pantry in our kitchen is there. We have nothing to offer him, nothing to put on the table. We are wretched, miserable, and poor. He, however, is our Creator and our Redeemer, the one who brought water from the rock and bread from heaven for the children of Israel in the wilderness, the one who turned water into wine for the guests at the wedding in Cana of Galilee, and who multiplied five barley loaves and two small fish to feed a crowd of over 5,000. Now, this is important. Because the spiritual provisions that Christ brings to the table when we let him into our hearts and lives, and he dines with us, are the very means by which he strengthens us and enables us to overcome the world, the flesh, and the devil. And so the dining, he says, will lead to overcoming. To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with me on my throne as I also overcame and sat down with my father on his throne." The reason why overcoming is so important is that this is not going to end. It's going to go on and continue forever and forever in heaven. For the Christian, this life is not the end, it's the preparation for a greater and a fuller and an unending life with Christ in heaven. And do you know that our Lord tells the Father He doesn't want to be in heaven without us? Even now, as our great High Priest at the right hand of God, He is praying. Father, I desire that they also whom you gave me may be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory which you have given me. So if Christ dines with us here on earth, he gives us spiritual nourishment to overcome so that we may dine with him in glory. We shall share with him then in the great marriage, feast, or supper of the Lamb. But we will not only dine with Him, he says, we will also reign with Him. Both Paul and John say so. Paul says if we suffer with Him, we will reign with Him. For His enthronement as the God-man will be shared by His people who are one with Him, who are married to Him. What an incredible offer this is to those who are wretched, miserable, poor, blind and naked. If we open the door for Christ to sit at our table, He, at the end of this age, will let us sit with Him. on His throne. I ask as I close, why then are we so loathe to open the door of our heart to Him? You know, the main reason, I think, is that we are afraid of what such a commitment will cost. We think of Christ taking away our life, robbing us of our life, instead of enhancing it. Somehow we are like that poor widow in the story that Spurgeon often used to tell. The story of one of his fellow ministers who knew that a poor widow in his church was in distressed state because she had been unable to pay her rent for a few weeks. And she feared that she was going to be evicted from her apartment. So the minister got hold of some money from the church's benevolent fund to take to her to pay the rent. And when he knocked on the door, there was no answer. Even after repeated knocking, there was no answer. The next Sunday after church at the door, he told her that he had come to visit her during the week and was disappointed not to find anybody at home. Oh, she replied. I heard the knocking. But I was afraid it was the man coming for the rent again. That's just like us, isn't it? That Christ, the Christ at our door, wants to save us from being evicted forever into the darkness of hell. Indeed, it was to pay the debt of our sin that He died in our place on the cross. His knocking for admittance, my friends, will not impoverish your life. but enrich it with spiritual gold in the sight of God, and clothe thou nakedness with His own imputed righteousness." If you have not yet opened the door of your soul to Christ, you need to ask Him to forgive you, and to help you, to give you grace to respond positively and immediately. It's a choice, friend, you cannot go on avoiding. You must either swing the door wide open to receive Christ or keep it shut in His face. A response is required on your part. What will it be? May God give you grace to cry, O come to my heart, Lord Jesus. There is room in my heart for you. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, the voice of the human preacher has died down. But we pray that there are those who have heard the still small voice of Jesus that is still speaking and still knocking. We pray that in your grace and in your goodness, by the power of the Holy Spirit, you will move them to open the door, for they must open that door. And we pray that they may do so with repentance and faith, and receive him gladly into their hearts, and live with him and for him forever and ever. Lord, if you will do that this morning, we will be careful to give you all the praise and all the glory. In Jesus' name, amen.