As we rush around doing all the things we do in life, the easiest thing in the world is for us to kind of believe in this Jesus … out there somewhere … but not really ever have a relationship with Him. It’s kind of a lukewarm thing … and as things turn out, that’s the last thing Jesus is looking for.

Knock, Knock – Who’s there?

It’s so exciting to be with you again at the beginning of a new series of messages that we are kicking off today. And before we get going, let me share with you what brought me to this place.

One of the things that I have done many, many times in churches around the world is to stand up the front, either leading worship or preaching, and one of the things I have noticed, especially, let me say, as people are supposedly worshipping God, is (what are the words?) a lack of engagement. You look around at the sea of faces and you can see the minds wandering – people being distracted by who is walking in late behind them; people looking at their watch … well, you can just tell that they are not there! Blankly staring into space – their lips might be moving, sure, but the last thing they are doing is actually worshipping God.

Now, I don’t care whether you are someone who believes passionately in Jesus, or maybe … maybe you are someone who is not in that place. Maybe you would call yourself more an agnostic or an atheist but irrespective of where we are at, if we wandered into a church amongst people who professed to believe in this amazing God, we would all expect them to be sincere about their faith, wouldn’t we? I mean, we would!

But a good many people aren’t! They go to church out of – I don’t know – a sense of obligation, maybe or maybe its habit. It blows my mind and that’s what led me to this series of messages. The series is called, “There’s a Knock at the Door,” and that’s a phrase that comes straight out of the Book of Revelation, as Jesus is speaking to a church where the people are lukewarm towards Him.

Now, we might think, “Well, at least they are lukewarm – that’s better than ice cold, right?” Um! We’ll have a listen to Jesus and see what His take on it is. Revelation chapter 3, beginning at verse 14:

And to the angel of the church in Laodicea write: The words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the origin of God’s creation. I know your works; you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth. For your say, “I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing.” You do not realise that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. Therefore I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire so that you may be rich; and white robes to clothe you and to keep the shame of your nakedness from being seen; and salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see.

I reprove and discipline those whom I love. Be earnest, therefore, and repent. Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me. To the one who conquers I will give a place with me on my throne, just as I myself conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne. Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches.

So this idea that lukewarm is better than cold is far from the truth. Jesus wishes we were either cold or hot. Have you ever drunk a lukewarm cup of tea or coffee? It’s disgusting! What you want to do is spit it out of your mouth. And see, the thing doesn’t start with the church; the thing starts in our hearts – you and I – we’re hot, or we’re lukewarm or we are cold, when it comes to this Jesus; this God who loves us with a love that would have Jesus nailed to a cross for you and me. Nothing, absolutely nothing lukewarm about God’s love for you and me! God is passionate about you and me.

And yet it is so easy for us to live a lukewarm life. Just recently, I had to fill out a census form here in Australia – we had a national census, I think it’s every five years or so. They ask you all sorts of questions; one of the things they ask you is your religion. You can tick the different Christian denominations or boxes for other religions. Last census, almost two thirds of us ticked a box for a Christian religion and yet only ten percent of us are regularly part of a church. That’s at least over fifty percent of the nation who are probably lukewarm Christians – probably more because there are plenty of people in churches today who are lukewarm Christians. Okay, it’s a broad generalisation, but you get my point.

By far, the vast majority of people who would call themselves “Christian”, aren’t committed followers of Jesus Christ. By far, the majority of people who would call themselves “Christian”, aren’t in a dynamic, vital community of faith. By far, the majority of people who call themselves “Christian” have anything but an intimate relationship with Jesus. Hello? I’m sorry if I am getting in your face here. I’m sorry if this has you squirming in your seat a bit, but this passage that I just read before – this passage of Jesus talking to a bunch of lukewarm Christians, is bound to make us squirm a little in our seats if we happen to be a lukewarm Christian.

Anyone who kind of believes in this Jesus as a bit of an insurance policy, just in case; anyone who kind of believes in Jesus but has Him at arm’s length; anyone who goes through the motions – plays out the religious rituals but doesn’t have a relationship with Jesus; anyone who is in that place is going to squirm just a bit. That’s good; I think that’s what Jesus is looking for, because today, if you are in that place, the last thing I’m here to do is to criticise you or condemn you because I spent a huge part of my life in that place. I know it well. And the longer I stayed in that place the less certain I even became that there was a God who had sent His Son to earth to die on a cross to pay for my sins.

So if you are one of the people who are kind of squirming a bit – wondering whether you really are a Christian; wondering whether Jesus would consider you hot or cold or lukewarm, this is especially for you. Today there is a knock at the door; a knock at the door of your heart. Today as we spend these minutes together, I believe Jesus is knocking on the door of your heart and asking you, “Where are you at?” Today, I believe Jesus is calling you to open your heart to Him.

And I remember when He first came knocking on the door of my heart. It was a shock! You know those “Knock, knock” jokes – “Knock, knock, who’s there?” And that’s what it felt like. Hang on, someone or something is kind of knocking at the door of my heart. I had this sense that God was touching me; that God was speaking to me; that God wanted to fellowship with me. It was such a weird feeling. It was like, “What’s this? What’s going on? Who is there?” It was an unsettling feeling. And I know beyond a shadow of a doubt, as I speak these words, there is many a man, woman and child listening who has the same unsettling thing happening inside them right now.

That’s because Jesus is knocking on your heart. He doesn’t want you to lukewarm any more. He wants something so much more; so much better for you – here and now, for the rest of your life and for all eternity. I can speak the words but I can’t touch your heart, only He can and that’s precisely what may be happening to you right now.

When Jesus Comes for You

There was a time in my life – twenty years ago or so – when I was completely alone on this earth. I mean, completely alone; no friends, no family. Now, sure, I knew people but none of them were my friends; at least, that’s what I thought. I’d never been alone like that before.

If you have been in that place, you know how devastating it is to find yourself completely alone. And then, little by little, a handful of people – three people at first – came out of the woodwork and gathered around me and became my friends. I was going through some awful stuff in life and these three people all had a couple of things in common. Firstly, they were Christians and secondly, because I hated Christians, I’d never been very nice to them.

As I look back on those times I realise that back then, I wasn’t particularly easy to love … truly. Not only were things difficult for me, but I had an ego the size of a small planet; I wouldn’t listen to people and boy, did I hate Christians. So for these three people to step up to the plate and care for me the way they did, to this day, I find that completely astounding.

Now Jesus had been on my case in the months leading up to that time and as I shared earlier, He had been knocking at the door of my heart – I knew that but it was when He brought these people into my life that, all of a sudden, He became real.

We are chatting today about this sense that Jesus is knocking at the door of our hearts and whether we have been a church goer for a life time or perhaps not, that simply isn’t the issue. There are many people who warm the pews of a church each Sunday and yet they have never experienced a dynamic, life changing relationship with Jesus. They’re the people who – as I once was – who are lukewarm. Let’s have a listen again to what Jesus has to say about that. Revelation chapter 3, beginning at verse 16. Jesus says:

Look, because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I am going to spit you out of my mouth. For you say, “I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing.’ You do not realize that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind and naked.

Now, that bit about being rich is something I really relate to. I wasn’t rich per se but I was pretty well off. I thought I was self sufficient. I subscribed to the theory that you make your own life. Life is what you make it – work hard, focus, achieve – life is going to be fantastic. And truly, I thought my life was fantastic but there was always something missing; there was always an emptiness there; there was always a sense that, as hard as I was working and as successful as I was becoming – according to the world’s standards and the world’s plans – I was somehow missing the point.

When I first read these words of Jesus, they were like a sword that cut through all the pretence and the pride, straight to the quick; straight to my heart. I knew in an instant what the problem was:

You say, “I’m rich, I have prospered, I need nothing.” You don’t realise that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind and naked.

Absolutely, that was it! That was precisely the life I was living. I was kidding myself. I thought I could see clearly but I was blind and what a terrible state that is to live in! Again, Jesus puts it this way in Matthew chapter 6, verses 22 and 23. He says:

Look, the eye is like the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!

In other words: if you think you have your act together; if we think we are seeing life clearly – but we are deluding ourselves, we have it all wrong – then, “Houston, we have a problem!”

Now interestingly, Jesus said that in the context of wealth – the delusion of wealth – thinking that we are all well and good if we are provided for and we have plenty of money in the bank and a good income; hey, it’ll be a good as gold! And that’s how many people live their lives. That how I lived! I really didn’t need God because I had provided for myself – that was the delusion I was living out.

And so I went from believing in Jesus in my late teen years to kind of going lukewarm for a good many years on the basis that I was self sufficient, to finally not even knowing if Jesus was real. That, as it turns out, is a pretty typical cycle. You can’t stay lukewarm forever, eventually you go cold.

And so my prayer for anyone today who has anything but a rich, fulfilling, dynamic, passionate relationship with Jesus – if you are in a place that falls a long way short of that, then my prayer for you is that by hearing what Jesus is saying, your eyes will be open to the truth of the reality of life that you are living. Not for any other reason than the fact that Jesus has so much better planned for you.

For you say, ‘I am rich, I have prospered, I need nothing.’ You don’t realise that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind and naked. Therefore I counsel you (this is Jesus talking remember) – therefore I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire so that you may be rich; and white robes to clothe you and to keep the shame of your nakedness from being seen; and salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see.

When I came to that realisation, it took some doing. I had to ditch my pride; I had to admit that I was in the place that Jesus was saying I was at, so I know how hard it can be to admit that. Even though once we may have professed some sort of faith in this Jesus; even though once our backsides may have warmed the pew of a church, today, now, here, maybe you are in this place; maybe you are lukewarm or going cold and it’s time to admit that and do something about it. So if this is speaking to your heart right at this moment, I know … believe you me, I know what it feels like.

But let me encourage you to trade in the pride and the desire for the world’s riches for the real God; the real truth that will truly make you rich. Let me encourage you to accept the white robes that Jesus is offering you in this place right now – the robes of complete forgiveness; complete right standing in God’s sight – free from shame and reproach. Let me encourage you to let His Word be the salve to anoint your eyes so that you may truly see. Know the truth because as you do, it will set you free to live the life that Jesus always planned for you.

We Don’t Have to Tidy Up

The other weekend my wife, Jacqui, and I had a bunch of people over for drinks on Saturday afternoon. We live in an apartment complex and a new couple have moved in on our floor so we thought, “Let’s invite the other people as well so this new couple could meet their neighbours.” It was a really good time. But you know, with my upbringing and all, I can’t help myself – I have to do a major cleaning operation before we have visitors. I whizz around with the vacuum cleaner and I make sure the bathroom is sparkling clean and the kitchen and all that.

Not that we live in a mess, we don’t. And it’s not that I’m interested in impressing people either, because I’m not. It’s just that that’s what my parents used to do and somehow that kind of behaviour has been – I don’t know – imprinted on me, if you like. Some people are tidy, other people are messy; I’m a tidiness freak and I really enjoy living in a tidy place.

Now, these were our neighbours; nice people all of them but they were just our neighbours. So as I was hauling the vacuum cleaner around the lounge room, I’m wondering to myself if this is the trouble I go to for a bunch of neighbours, imagine … I mean, just imagine if Jesus was coming over for dinner tonight. Imagine if I knew that the Son of God was going to be knocking on my front door at 6.30pm tonight and come in a join us for dinner. I suspect that that impulse to clean up and tidy up would have been about, I don’t know, a gazillion times stronger than it was for my neighbours. I suspect I’d want to clean the place to within an inch of its life.

But is that really what Jesus would want us to do? To tell you the truth, it was this idea – can I call it a delusion; yea, that’s not too strong a word – it was this delusion that caused me to keep my distance from God for probably – I don’t know – twenty years or so. I started out believing; knowing there was a God but I was doing things in my life that I knew were wrong. And when you know what you are doing is wrong and you want to keep doing that, how can you possibly get close to God? I mean, any kid learns growing up that if it does something wrong it’s going to get punished. So we run away from God because that the natural reaction we have to our own disobedience.

Nothing new in that! I mean, Adam and Eve that very first time they sinned, had the very same response. The first sin in the history of the human race – eating the fruit from that one tree of which God said, “Don’t eat the fruit from this tree.” Genesis chapter 3, beginning at verse 8:

They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord among the trees of the garden.

Just like Adam and Eve, I spent twenty years on the run from God, deluding myself that my success and the money I was earning and the house that I bought were where it was all at. I was self sufficient and so I reasoned: I didn’t need God! To tell you the truth, that was just a cop out; that was just my excuse to keep on keeping on with my anger and my selfishness and all that stuff. Are you relating to any of this?

I think we can all fess up to this happening in our own lives at some time and so like Adam and Eve, we feel compelled to run and hide from God. Have you ever thought how stupid that is? As though we can hide from an all seeing, all knowing, all loving, all powerful God!! Give me a break!

And so there we hide, thinking to ourselves, “I can’t face God. I have to clean up my act.” Until one day, God comes looking for us, just as He did with Adam and Eve:

But the Lord God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?” And Adam said, I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.

That’s the discomfort we feel when God comes knocking at the door of our hearts. But here’s the amazing thing: we don’t have to clean up our acts first – that’s something that Jesus will help us do later. Have a listen with me again to exactly what He said – Revelation chapter 3, beginning at verse 19. Jesus said:

I reprove and discipline those whom I love. Be earnest, therefore, and repent. Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you and you with me.

In other words, “I love you and because I love you, let Me reprove you; let Me discipline you.” And literally, the original Greek words that sit aback of our English translation carry with them the sense of correcting and training. In other words what Jesus wants to do for us and with us, out of His great love, is to help us clean up our act. And what does He want us to do? What’s our part in this transaction of transformation?

Be earnest, therefore and repent.

What does that mean? Literally it means to “change our minds”; to turn back to Him. That’s all! The reason we want to run and hide is that we have the sequence confused in our heads. We think it’s (1) clean up our act and (2) then come back to God through Jesus. And right here and right now Jesus is saying, “No! You have got that wrong. You have forgotten about this thing called “grace”. What I want you to do is (1) repent – first change your mind and come back to Me. And then (2) together, we will clean up your act. And that makes perfect sense because you and I simply don’t have the power to clean up our respective acts.

Now, I’m one of the strongest willed people you will ever meet. I went from smoking three packs of cigarettes a day to completely giving up in a single instant. That was thirty years ago and I haven’t had a cigarette since that time. And yet still, I can’t clean up my own act. That’s what Jesus is doing for me now.

When Jesus knocks on our door to have dinner with us, we don’t have to race round and clean up – we don’t have to vacuum the lounge room and tidy the cushions on the sofa. He didn’t come to do a ‘house cleanliness’ inspection. He came to have dinner with us. Cleaning up the mess? “Let’s have dinner first”, says Jesus, “let’s sit and chat first – let’s be together, then I’ll help you clean up your act.”

Don’t believe me? Have another listen to His own Words. Listen:

I am standing at the door knocking. If you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you and you with me.

This is not a point of condemnation; this is a point of invitation. What an invitation – dinner with Jesus!! – dinner with the Son of God who will help clean up the life of anyone; any man, any woman, any child who earnestly has a change of mind.

Jesus is knocking at the door! Jesus is inviting you into a relationship with Him – will you open the door?

When we’re out there doing it our way as that old song goes, living life, kind of rejecting Jesus – not completely, just a bit on the lukewarm side – the hardest thing to do can be to take the decision to open the door when He comes a knocking. It’s hard that is, until we realise what His purpose is … and it may not be what we think.

Dinner with Jesus

Just the other night my wife Jacqui and I were invited over for dinner by some friends of ours, James and Shirley. So we headed over, picked up our daughter from work along the way, she came with us. They’d prepared this lovely meal, a rich stew with lots of vegetables which I really like. In one sense it wasn’t a real flashy meal, not up market if you will but that wasn’t the point. It was a week night, they’d both been at work all day as we had. It was just such a joy sitting down sharing a meal together, sharing our lives with one another.

It’s those simple things in life that I really enjoy, don’t you? Every now and then to just fellowship with friends over a meal is something really, really special. Not a large crowd, just us and some friends. That’s how we get to know one another. That’s how we get to know the heart, the life, the joys, the sorrows of someone – by sharing a meal with them.

This week again on the program we’re continuing our theme of intimacy with Jesus in this series that I’ve called, “There’s a Knock at the Door” because Jesus, as it turns out, wants exactly that same sort of relationship with you and with me. And that, from where I sit is absolutely awesome. That’s something worth wrapping our hearts around – His passion to be close to us.

So far in this series, we’ve spent some time in this passage in the Book of Revelation. I’m going to read it again. It comes from the Book of Revelation Chapter 3 and it starts at verse 14:

And to the angel of the Church in Laodicea write: The words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the origin of God’s creation: “I know your works; you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were either cold or hot. So, because you’re lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I’m going to spit you out of my mouth. For you say ‘I am rich, I have prospered and I need nothing.’ You don’t realise that you’re wretched, pitiable, poor, blind and naked.

Therefore I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire so that you may be rich; and white robes to clothe you and to keep the shame of your nakedness from being seen; and salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see. I reprove and discipline those whom I love. Be earnest, therefore, and repent. Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice then open the door, I will come into you and eat with you and you with me.

To the one who conquers I will give a place with me on my throne, just as I myself conquered and sat down with my father on his throne. Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the spirit is saying to the Churches.

What we’ve seen so far is that Jesus is passionate about being close to you and me and the last thing … the very last thing He wants from us is a lukewarm response. Give Him hot or give Him cold, anything but lukewarm. But more often than not that’s exactly what He gets from us – lukewarm! Why? Because we’re so caught up in the here and now that we say, “I’m rich, I’ve prospered, I don’t need anything”. We don’t realise that we’re wretched, pitiable, poor, blind and naked. Ain’t that just the truth?

I spent half my lifetime living like that. In fact not long after I gave my life to Jesus the pastor of my Church asked me to write down my testimony so I did. This is how it started out. “I never really needed God …” And that’s exactly how it felt. I was doing pretty well in life, I had a good job, good career prospects, all that stuff and one day, the hard way, Jesus came along and opened my eyes to the truth. I thought I was rich … but really I was wretched, pitiable, poor, blind and naked.

I had money but what I was missing out on was the rich abundant life that Jesus came to give me and you know at the point of realising that, when I finally woke up – a bit like the prodigal son sitting there amongst the pigs when he came to his senses – I felt like such a dill. I realised how pitiable my pride must have looked to God and so my natural reaction was to shrink away from Him.

You know when you know that you know you’re not worthy. I’d always had that sneaking suspicion but when Jesus shines His light in your heart, when we can finally see all the muck that’s there for what it really is – muck – what we naturally want to do is to pull away from God.

I had a man contact me not so long ago who’d been a generous supporter of our ministry but he was into some stuff in his life that he knew was wrong and so he was pulling away from Jesus. He knew that that was the worst thing he could do but he was still doing it because it came naturally. We feel so inadequate, so unworthy so we pull away. Been there? Yes … me too.

And it’s into that situation that Jesus is speaking. Remember He’s speaking here to a lukewarm Church in Laodicea that’s at risk of pulling away from Him and so He comes along with the exact opposite. He calls them to come to their senses:

Be earnest therefore and repent. Listen, I’m standing at the door knocking, if you hear my voice open the door. I’ll come into you and eat with you and you with me. (Revelation 3:19-20)

“If only you’ll have a change of mind, what you hear is my knocking at the door or of your heart”, says Jesus, “and what I want to do is to come in and sit down and have a meal with you. Nothing fancy, just a good honest meal so we can sit and eat together and chat together and fellowship together. You can hear my heart and I can hear your heart.”

That’s what Jesus is saying here. It’s an invitation to the sinner. It’s an invitation for you and me to decide to earnestly turn our lives back towards Jesus; to open the door of our heart’s to let Him in so He can fellowship with us, dine with us, draw close to us. But when we’re in that place of feeling inadequate and unworthy, it’s the very last thing we expect.

What we expect is condemnation and punishment but that’s not why Jesus came. He didn’t come to condemn us, He came to save us … to save us from a life of a deluded, pitiable, poor, blind, naked wretch. That’s what makes Christianity – which is a belief in this very same Jesus – totally different from any other belief system or faith or so called religion on the planet.

The thing that sets the Christian apart is that he or she believes in the grace and the mercy of God. We believe that because Jesus paid for all our sin we can come to Him now and rely on what He did on the Cross for us back then. Rely on the fact that we are totally forgiven, totally set free to be totally one with Him. And just as the picture I painted for you of the dinner my family and I had with our friends James and Shirley the other night is beautifully heart warming, as simple as it is, so this picture of Jesus knocking at our door desiring to dine with a sinner, is totally wondrous and awesome and sublime.

Listen, I’m standing at the door knocking. If you hear my voice open the door, I’ll come into you and eat with you and you with me.

So what’s your response?

The Matthew Discovery

Before the break we were chatting about the passion that Jesus has to come and fellowship with us, the passion He has, as it were, to share a meal with us. Yet so often that’s the last thing we’d ever expect. The more we become aware of God, of who He is, of the love He has for us and all that He’s done, the more aware we become of our short comings, the more aware we become of our sin, the more aware we become of that fact that we simply aren’t worthy.

That’s what kept me running away from God for almost two decades of my life. This knowledge that if I ever came face to face with Jesus that I’d get what I deserved – condemnation and punishment. That of course was before I understood the concept of grace, the unmerited favour of God, the mercy and the forgiveness that I have when I put my trust in Jesus.

Although … to tell you the truth so awesome is the Grace of God – this Amazing Grace – that I am absolutely certain that it will take me for the rest of eternity to truly come to grips with what it means. And I know that I’m not alone. So when some joker gets up on the radio and starts talking about this Jesus knocking on the door, wanting to have a meal with us, wanting to fellowship with us, man I know how difficult that can be to come to grips with.

Listen, says Jesus, I’m standing at the door knocking. If you hear my voice and open the door I’ll come into you and eat with you and you with me.

That’s the key passage that we’ve been unpacking. This idea that if only we’ll have a change of heart, you and I, if only we’ll open our hearts to receive Jesus, He’ll come in and be close to us, linger with us, dine with us, fellowship with us.

It’s an awesome idea but is it true? Other than this verse in the last Book of the Bible, Revelation 3:20, is there any evidence that Jesus really, really wants to do that … that He really means to do that in my life and in yours? That’s the question.

Well right now we’re going to spend some time with an outcast who, perhaps like you and me, would have struggled to begin to even comprehend that it could be true. He was a man who was loathed by his fellow Jews. He was despised by them. Why? Because he was a tax collector. None of us like paying taxes, although these days we understand that we need taxes to live in a country that provides law and order and hospitals and schools and all the other essential services to it’s people. But back in the 1st Century Israel, tax collectors were essentially extortionists.

They would bid for the right to collect tolls on a particular road on behalf of the Roman Emperor. That was the first thing: they were working for Rome, the occupying force oppressing their fellow countrymen. And secondly once they’d won the right to collect a toll on this particular stretch of road they’d then inflate the amount in order to pay the bribes that were required to win the contract in the first place, and also to make a handsome profit. Most of them lived a pretty high life. So you can see why they were despised by their fellow Jews.

So imagine a tax collector living in a town and he hears that Jesus, this ‘rock star’, is coming to town. The crowds are milling around. They’ve all heard about the miracles, they’re all aware of His reputation as a preacher like no other. That’s where we’re going to pick up Matthews story. Matthew Chapter 9 beginning at verse 9:

As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth; and he said to Matthew, ‘Follow me.’ And Matthew got up and followed him. And as he sat at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees, the religious leaders, saw this, they said to Jesus’ disciples, ‘Why does your Teacher eat with the tax collectors and sinners?’

But when Jesus heard this he said, ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy not sacrifice’. For I have come not to call the righteous but to call the sinners.’ 

Now intuitively we kind of imagine, you and I, that if the Son of God was coming to town He’d want to catch up with whom? Well the religious leaders, and in our case, maybe the Archbishop or the Bishops. Or He’d want to dine with senior politicians or maybe reputable business leaders. Imagine if instead, Jesus came into your town and my town and He walked past all of those people and He went down to a seedy cafe where the prostitutes and the drug dealers hang out. Imagine that, what would people say about Him then?

That’s exactly what He did here and the religious leaders were none to happy with Him when they heard. And from a human perspective, maybe we can understand that because it’s not what we would expect the Son of God to do. If you or I were Matthew would we have expected Jesus to come to our place for dinner with all our outcast friends? Well of course we wouldn’t, that’s the last thing we would have expected.

In Eastern culture table fellowship’s a big thing. It confers honour on someone when a person of higher status comes to dine at their place so this was a powerfully symbolic act. Jesus did it deliberately, not just to tell Matthew and his mates that He’d come to earth for them but to explain to everyone else, especially those hypercritical self righteous religious leaders, that Jesus had come not for the righteous but for the sinners. Not for the people who were lifted up in everyone else’s eyes but for the flotsam and jetsam of society, for the people who desperately needed Him.

Now let’s put ourselves in Matthew’s shoes for a moment, how does that make him feel? To know that this amazing miracle man – this Jesus with “rock star” status who draws these massive crowds with His meetings – would come to his place for dinner. How would that make you feel? Well for me I’m thinking I’d be blown away completely by the honour.

Jesus, blessing and honouring Matthew in this way without any condemnation at all, without telling Matthew what he already knew – that the way he was living his life was wrong – Jesus gets a change of heart out of the man. Jesus shows Matthew and his friends mercy, something the religious leaders apparently didn’t know too much about. As a result Matthew ends up leaving his lucrative extortion business of tax collecting and becomes one of Jesus’ closest twelve Disciples.

Friend, that’s the transformation that the mercy of God, through Jesus His Son, brings to our lives. This radical mercy and grace and love that has Him accepting us just the way we are is what sets off a chain reaction of transformation. It has to, it’s so outrageous! And all we have to do is to acknowledge where we’re at and turn our lives back to Jesus, because He came precisely for sinners like you and me. And wherever you are on your journey, whatever you’ve done in your life, whatever you’re ashamed of, whatever’s caused you to drift away from God ever farther each day – it’s all washed away the moment you put your trust in this Jesus who came for Matthew, who came for me, who came for you.

That’s grace, pure and simple: the totally unmerited favour of God for all who’d place their trust in this Jesus who’s knocking at the doors of our hearts this very moment and asking us to invite Him in. This very Jesus who wants to have dinner at our place, to linger, to laugh, to listen, to lead us on into a new place, a new freedom, a new eternity. He stands at the door and knocks, He waits. What a pity with so many of us He has to wait so long.

After this short break we’re going to take a look at that door and what it looks like from Jesus’ perspective. Have you ever thought of that? It might be an interesting view of the world. That’s after this short break.

Light of the World

Okay, so Jesus is standing on the other side of this door knocking – the door of our hearts, your heart and my heart. There’s a great painting by a man called William Holman Hunt, called ‘The Light of the World’. It was painted in the mid 1800’s. It depicts Jesus standing before a long unopened door covered in overgrowth and weeds … and He’s knocking.

It’s night time, it’s dark. He’s carrying a lamp, hence the name of the painting, “The Light of the World”. Hunt, fifty years after painting this picture, felt the need to explain the symbolism:

‘I painted the picture with what I thought, unworthy though I was, to be a Divine command and not simply as a good subject.’ The door in the painting has no handle and can therefore only be opened from the inside representing ‘the obstinately shut mind.’

I know it well because at the Church that I’m part of we have a large version of this painting turned into a stained glass window which is back lit. Our old building was knocked down but fortunately someone thought to bring this beautiful stained glass window into the new building.

Cool painting with a powerful notion, this idea that the door can only be opened from the one side, from the inside and that it’s a long, long time since this particular door was opened. Doesn’t it represent the picture of many a man’s and many a woman’s life?

So can God soften our hearts? Sure He can. But at the end of the day He gives us a free will to accept Him or reject Him when He reveals Himself to us. However, the important thing about this passage in Revelation Chapter 3 is that He’s knocking on the door of the hearts of men and women in the Church of Laodicea.

So these aren’t people who’ve never met Him before, these aren’t people who never heard the Good News of Jesus. These are in fact God’s own people at whose door He stands; people who by all account had seriously upset Him through their lukewarm attitude towards Him. And He’s standing outside this door that can only be opened from the inside, knocking.

‘So because you are lukewarm and neither cold nor hot I am about to spit you out of my mouth’, says Jesus.

Now if someone had seriously upset you, would you go out at night and stand outside their front door knocking? Would you take the trouble to stand there and wait for them to answer and if so how long would you stand there? What would be going on in your heart as you stood there waiting for this person who had upset you?

What if that person who upset you takes forever to answer the door? Not just a minute or two, not just half an hour, not just a few hours, not just a few days but what if you’re standing outside this door knocking and the person who’s upset you takes months or even years to open the door?

Do you see my point? Jesus the Son of God, as He always has, goes out of His way to find the lost sheep. He goes out of His way to come to us, to call us back to Himself. He goes out of His way to knock on our door and to offer to come in and bless us and to have dinner with us. Now imagine how it must feel for Him, the Son of God, the creator of the universe as He stands outside in the dark and the cold, Jesus the Son of God waiting, waiting for us to take the time to answer.

Already He’s humbled Himself by just coming, already He’s opened Himself up to relationship from His side by dying on that brutal Cross so that you and I could be forgiven … and we leave Him standing outside in the cold because our response to Him is lukewarm. Imagine if He came to your door tonight physically and knocked on the door, would you leave Jesus outside?

So why is it that as we get distracted with all the things in life we manage to leave Jesus at arms length outside on the other side of the door of our hearts knocking? His intent is clear, to come in and to dine with us and to fellowship with us, to come and bless us as He blessed Matthew and his friends … and yet we have the hide sometimes to leave Him waiting out in the cold.

All He asks of us is that we earnestly repent, earnestly have a change of heart and mind and life so as to open the door. Repentance, this turning is what turns the handle from the inside and opens the door. Repentance is what opens the door and invites Jesus in to come and fellowship and dine with us: an earnest realisation that we’ve rejected Him, that in going our own way we’ve gone the wrong way. An earnest “I’m sorry”, an earnest “I want to have a relationship with you Jesus, I do want to linger with you, I do want to fellowship with you, I do want to have dinner with you.”

He’s already here, He’s already knocking, He’s just waiting for us to repent and open the door. You know my prayer for each of us is that today as we’ve heard God’s Word, as we picture Jesus standing outside the door knocking, my prayer for each of us is that we are rocked to the core by the reality of a God that would come after us; the reality of a God who would send His Son to die for us so that we could be forgiven. The reality of a God who comes to seek us out wherever we are, whatever we’re doing, however badly we’ve hurt Him, who comes to seek us out not to punish us, no not that at all, He comes to seek us out to call us close to have a relationship with Him.

My prayer is that you and I would be rocked to the core today by this God, this Jesus who came for you.

I stand at the door and knock.

Will you answer? Will you go to the door? Will you open the door? Will you invite Him in? The decision … the decision is yours, the decision is mine.

People have heart attacks because over many years, their arteries harden. It takes time. And the same’s true when we allow our hearts to harden against God. It doesn’t happen overnight … takes time. But Jesus … Jesus has a sure fire way to cure that. It happens in an instant. It’s called a change of heart.

The Hardening of the Heart

Hey, great to be with you again today. And today we are continuing in our series about having a powerful deep relationship with Jesus. The series is called “There’s a Knock at the Door.”

Now, last weekend I was really blessed to have a great break. I love doing what I do; I really love being able to spend these few minutes with you on the programme each week but you know something, I really love having a rest. I like that break over the weekend. You know, you work hard all week – at least I do – generally they are long hours. And although when you love doing what you do (it doesn’t feel like work) come the end of the week, have to tell ya, I’m ready for a rest.

And one of the highlights of my weekend is waking up on Saturday morning and planning a date with my beautiful wife. Now that our kids have grown up we are able to just go out on a little date on a Saturday morning to a coffee shop – mostly it’s only toast and coffee. But it’s something we do for us. We chat, we read the paper, we just spend time together. I’d have to say, it’s the most special time of the week for me.

But before you get the idea that we are a perfect couple, with a perfect marriage, let me tell you, I am not a perfect husband – as much as I’d like to be. And sometimes, Jacqui isn’t the perfect wife. I can be such an insensitive clod sometimes and that can bruise Jacqui’s feelings. And yet, even though we are two imperfect people – sure we are trying to honour God; sure we are doing our best to love each other – but despite our imperfections, we love each other and our relationship is intact and hopefully growing deeper and deeper with the passing years.

So how is that? How is it that two imperfect people can grow in their relationship? Well, here’s what I try to do in our marriage: whenever I get it wrong; whenever I’m insensitive or I make a mistake or I don’t take Jacqui’s feelings into account, whatever it is, that kind of cuts me to the quick. When I realise I’ve done wrong – and hopefully I’m making fewer mistakes these days than I was say five years ago – but when I realise I’ve made a mistake, I say “Sorry” and I try to mend my ways.

Now saying “sorry” isn’t something that comes naturally to me and learning to say “sorry” has been one of the hardest things for me to do in my life, because “sorry” is about humbling yourself. “Sorry” is about admitting that you have made a mistake. “Sorry” is about taking the first step to mend a relationship and yet, as we live our lives together, Jacqui and I, best we can, making mistakes, saying “sorry”, pulling each other closer, the relationship grows.

If on the other hand we just made mistakes and never ever said “sorry”, never apologised, never had a softening and a changing of heart, tell you what, the relationship would pull further and further and further apart. And that’s how divorce happens! Because hearts grow first lukewarm, then eventually hard and cold and it takes time – but before you know it, there’s no love there anymore; there no relationship there anymore.

Now the reason I have shared that with you today, is that it’s a powerful metaphor, if you will, or a parallel, in understanding the relationship between God and ourselves. Last week on the programme we spent some time understanding this concept of Jesus knocking at the door of our hearts. He loves us more than a man or a woman can ever love one another. He loves us with a powerful, tender, sacrificial love and yet you and I, whilst once we may have been on fire for Him, have this ability to grow lukewarm in our relationship with Him.

Let’s just take another look at what He has to say about that: Revelation chapter 3, beginning at verse 15. Jesus says:

Look, I know your works; you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth. For you say, “I am rich, I have prospered, and I have need of nothing.” You do not realize that you are wretched, pitiable, poor and blind, and naked. Therefore, I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire so that you may be rich; and white robes to clothe you and to keep the shame of your nakedness from being seen; and salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see. I reprove and discipline those whom I love. Be earnest, therefore, and repent. Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice, open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me. To the one who conquers I will give a place with me on my throne, just as I myself have conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne. Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches.

As I said, we have spent quite a bit of time taking a look at what Jesus is saying to us through that passage, but the bit that I would like to unpack this week on the programme is the bit about repentance. Because, to tell you the truth, when I first became a Christian – almost twenty years ago now – I remember those Christians talking about repentance. And can I be perfectly honest with you here? I thought to myself, ‘What! I mean, it sounds like a word from the 1950s. It’s a kind of religious, moralising kind of word; it’s an old fashioned concept being spouted by an out of date irrelevant church. Repentance? Oh, give me a break!’ Not sure how you react to the word but me, every time I still hear it today, it has that kind of feeling of a “religiousy” kind of word to me.

And yet its meaning is anything but that. Can I go back to what I shared with you about Jacqui and myself earlier? In our imperfection, the only way we keep our marriage relationship together; the only way we keep growing in our love for one another; the only way we get to look forward to our special date on Saturday mornings and being together, is constantly to repent. Constantly to admit that we have done wrong; to admit we gave failed; to apologise to one another; to mend our ways. And that right there is exactly what repentance is.

And so when Jesus is calling those of us whose hearts have grown lukewarm towards Him; those of us who have become distracted with all the trinkets and baubles this world dangles before us, what is it He says? What does He call you and me to do? He is saying to us, right here and right now, “Be earnest therefore, and repent.” Literal meaning of that original word for repent, here it is, word for word from my Greek lexicon:

… to change one’s mind for better; heartily to amend with the abhorrence of one’s past sins.

In other words, to get a grip; to realise that what we are doing is wrong; to have the guts to admit that to ourselves and having had that change of heart, to change what it is that we are doing. Now isn’t that exactly what I have just described in our marriage relationship before? Isn’t that what keeps a marriage together? Absolutely, it is! So ‘repenting’ isn’t some old fashioned religious word, it’s one of the most – in fact, let me say this – it’s the single most important thing in maintaining healthy relationships and growing strong relationships.

And the thing I love, or one of the things I love most about Jesus is, He doesn’t want us to be religious with Him; He doesn’t want us to go through the motions with Him. He wants a relationship; He wants to fellowship with us. He wants to come in and have a meal with us. And so the key to unlocking that door from the inside is you and me having an earnest change of heart. The key to that relationship is taking that knock at the door seriously; to be earnest, because Jesus is standing there knocking, wanting to be close to us – being earnest and having a change of mind, a change of heart, a change of ways, because He is stands and He knocks.

The Whole Point of God’s Kindness

As I said earlier, this series of messages is called, “There’s a Knock at the Door”. And of course, all the messages are available online if you have missed any of them, at www.christianityworks.com Now the whole point; the crux of what we are hearing Jesus say to us in all of this is that because we live here in this physical world, with all its distractions, our hearts can grow lukewarm towards Him and that is the one thing He doesn’t want to see happen. What He wants is a close, intimate, personal relationship with each one of us. Let’s just have another listen to this powerful word from Revelation chapter 3, beginning at verse 15. Let’s just listen to this as though Jesus was saying it to you and to me. He says:

I know your works; you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth. For you say, ‘I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing.’ You do not realize that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. Therefore I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire so that you may be rich; and white robes to clothe you and to keep the shame of your nakedness from being seen; and salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see. I reprove and discipling those whom I love. So be earnest and repent. Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me.

Do you know the whole point? Relationship not religion!! And our part in that relationship is this earnest repenting thing that Jesus talks about. And we will unpack that some more because in a sense, that’s our small part in this transaction.

I was reading something interesting the other day; something else that Jesus said when He was walking the dusty roads of first century Israel. He actually explained what the purpose or one the key purposes of all His miracles was. Now of course, these miracles of healing brought amazing blessing and relief to one or two people who were involved each time. Okay, sometimes it was a lot more than one or two people but if you are blind and He gave you back your sight, I mean, can you imagine? If you were an ostracised an outcast leper and He healed you of your leprosy, I mean, can you imagine what it would have been like to be able to back to life with your family and your friends again?

So there was an immediate blessing to the recipients of those miracles. But those miracles were meant to speak something into the wider community. They were meant to illicit a response from the wider community. Have a listen to what Jesus says about this. We are reading from Matthew chapter 11, beginning at verse 20:

Jesus began to reproach the cities in which most of his deeds of power had been done, because they did not repent. “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the deeds of power done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I tell you, on the day of judgement it will be more tolerable for them than for you. And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? No, you will be brought down to Hades. For if the deeds of power done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I tell you that on the day of judgement it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom than for you.”

At that time Jesus said, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and you have revealed them to infants; yes, Father, for such was you glorious will.”

Now, Jesus is having a real go at some pretty major cities here, so what’s He on about? Well, He is saying, “Look, you have seen with your own eyes the miracles I did in your midst and still you wander off on your own merry way, ignoring my Father who sent Me. You look back on the cities of Sodom and Tyre and Sidon; cities that you know perished because of their evil and you scorn them. But if they had seen the miracles you’ve seen; if they had seen the blessing of God poured out on them the way it’s been poured out on you, gotta tell you, they would have repented a long time ago. You think you are clever,” Jesus is saying, “you think you are an advanced community with all your commerce and your wealth and all the stuff that is going on, that the blessing of God came close to you and you still have not repented; you still have not had an earnest change of mind.”

Well, there is a reason for that – because somehow He, in His wisdom, God reveals Himself to those who are prepared to humble themselves and admit they are wrong; those who are like little children. But from the proud – those who think they have all the answers; those who look down their noses from their positions of wealth and power – from those people He hides Himself. And as we have seen, repentance isn’t some 1950s religious concept … repentance means to have a change of heart; a change of mind; to be honest enough to admit that what we are doing is wrong; to turn away from the wrong and back to God and start living a life pleasing to Him.

In fact, this whole thing was right at the heart of Jesus’ message – it’s what He came to tell us. From the very commencement of His public ministry, we are told that:

Jesus began to proclaim, “Repent for the Kingdom of heaven has come near.

Matthew chapter 4, verse 17.

Why? Is it because He wants to wreak havoc on us? Is it because God is somehow some despotic God who wants to punish us? No! Whom did He send? Jesus! What was Jesus doing? He was showing kindness and love and mercy and power by healing people. Just think about that! He did a few other miracles – water into wine, feeding the 5,000 with a few fish and loaves, walking on water, stilling a storm – but by far the greatest number of Jesus’ miracles were healing people and casting out demons. He came to bless and to save, not to punish and condemn.

But there was and remains a point to all this blessing. The point is that it should bring us to our senses; the point is that we should take notice of God … this God who loves us and wants to bless us and wake up to ourselves and admit to ourselves our wrongs, turn away from those wrongs and turn back to Him. In fact the Apostle Paul gives us a neat, powerful, executive summary of what Jesus was saying to those unrepentant cities. Comes from Romans chapter 2, verse 4:

Or do you despise the riches of God’s kindness and forbearance and patience? Do you not realise that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?

Now, we, by and large, we want God’s kindness. We, by and large, want God’s blessing. We by, and large, want God to show up when we are in the schtuck and we need pulling out. But more often than not, the last thing we want to do is to repent – to turn away from the things that we know are wrong; to give our lives … our whole lives, every part of our lives – our hopes, our dreams, our gifts, our abilities, our time, our resources, our finances, our thoughts, our sexuality, our everything, our all in all – over to Jesus. But unless we do that, how else do we expect a rich, powerful relationship to happen with God, through Jesus? How do we expect to live in the blessing of God? The whole point of God’s kindness towards us is to get us to have a change of mind, change of heart, a change of life; to repent and bring our lives back to Him.

Does Jesus come to us with a carrot or a stick, you might ask? Well, what He is saying to those unrepentant cities; what He is saying to you and me, here and now, in this place, is that He comes to us first and foremost, with blessing, with deeds of power, with love, with healing, with kindness, with forbearance, because as A.W. Tozer once wrote, “God just doesn’t have mercy, God is mercy”. And as the Bible tells us, God doesn’t just have love, God is love. But He also warns us that one day … one day there is a stick coming; one day it will be too late; one day judgement will fall, but for the time being, Jesus stands at the door and He knocks.

This Ain’t for the Next Guy

There have been times when I have listened to some preacher carrying on about repenting and changing our ways and all that stuff – a bit like I have been over the last twenty minutes or so – and you know the thoughts that would most commonly spring to my mind? I’d start thinking of all the people I knew who needed to do some serious repenting – all the people who had offended me; the people who rubbed me the wrong way; those sinners over there, boy do they need to repent something fierce – if only they would repent, my world would be such a better place. I wonder if there isn’t a bit of that in all of us.

This must be for the next guy because I’m practically perfect in every way! And so as we come towards the end of our time together today, I just feel to speak into this for a moment.

The more grey hairs I get on my head, the more I’ve come to realise that for most of us, our default position is that we are pretty perfect and so this call for repentance can’t possibly be for us. It must be for that person over there. I definitely know they need to repent.

At least, that’s how I started my walk with Jesus nearly twenty years ago. But since that, what I have experienced is like … like God peeling the layers of the onion back as He goes deeper and deeper and deeper in dealing with the sin in my life; in healing me from the sin that’s robbed me of life. The more He does that, the more aware we become of our own sinful nature.

In fact, it’s something you see in the writings of Paul the Apostle. He wrote almost half the Books in the New Testament. And it’s the ones that he wrote towards the end of his time where he shows a much greater awareness of his own sinfulness than in the earlier ones. I mean, by the time he is about half way through writing the various epistles over a period of years, this is what he writes about himself in the Book of Romans – Romans chapter 7, verse 18:

I know nothing good dwells in me; in my flesh. I can will what is right, I just cannot do it. For I do not do the good that I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells in me. So I find it to be a law that whenever I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. See, I delight in the law of God in my innermost self, but I see in my members another law at work with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of sin and death?

They say that the first step in dealing with alcoholism is to admit that you are an alcoholic. That’s why at every A.A. meeting a person will stand up and say, “Hi, my name is Fred, I’m an alcoholic.” And the same is true of any sin. The first step is always admitting our sin – being real with ourselves; being honest with ourselves; not cutting ourselves yet more slack; not coming up with yet more excuses.

Have you noticed how good we are at excusing our own sin? Have you noticed how we rationalise our own sin away? How we say, “Well, you know, I was tired,” or “Ah, that person just annoyed me and I couldn’t help it. Aw well, it doesn’t really matter, I’ll sweep it under the carpet.”

Friend, that’s what we do! And so we continue on in our sin, not realising that the whole point of God’s kindness towards us is that He wants us to repent. The whole point of God’s kindness is to give us a new life that each day, more and more and more, is freer from the consequences of our sin – each day it becomes a better life; a more enjoyable life; a life with more impact for good; a life with more impact for God. Do you see?

So I just wonder whether today isn’t the very day that we need to let God’s Word be like a mirror to our face. Whether today isn’t the day that you and I finally say to ourselves:

Wretched man that I am!” or “Wretched woman that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of sin and death? Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Friend, God is calling us to a frank admission and in our frank admission, if we cast ourselves on the grace and the mercy; on the unmerited favour and kindness and forgiveness of God, there is the answer. Because as surely as God made little green apples, unless and until we do that, the ravages of our sin will continue to tear our lives apart.

Come on! Let’s have God’s Word as a mirror to our face. The ravages of our sin; the consequences of our sin are going to tear our lives apart until we finally repent; until we finally go to God with the admission that we are wrong, that we can’t help ourselves and that we need His power to change.

Repent – sounds like such an … old-fashioned word. And yet – all it really means, is to have a change of heart. A change of mind. To turn away from the muck that’s ruining our lives, back into the embrace of a God who loves us beyond words.

A Call to Repent

Today is a big day on the programme; a huge day on the programme. We have been chatting so far over the past few weeks about the heart that Jesus has to be close to us. The reason He came; the reason He did all those miracles; the reason He blesses us; the reason He is knocking at that door right now. You and I, we are so often just – I don’t know – bumbling our way through life, kind of believing in Jesus, kind of believing in God but really, honestly, a bit lukewarm.

You know, life is busy, things are okay and then Jesus comes along and says:

Look, I know your works; you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either cold or hot. But because you are lukewarm; you are neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth because you are saying to me, ‘Look, I am rich, I have prospered. I don’t need anything. But you don’t realise you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind and naked. So I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire so that you may be rich and white robes to clothe you and to keep the shame of your nakedness from being seen and a salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see. I reprove and discipline those whom I love. So, be earnest and repent. Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in and I will eat with you, and you with me.

See, Jesus wants us to have real gold; real purity; real vision – He wants us to get real with ourselves; He wants us to admit that we are not well off, we are not prosperous, that we are poor and pitiable and naked and … Come on, let’s get real with ourselves.

But as I can attest, repenting ain’t an easy thing to do. The reason is, it’s about pride. To repent – to have a change of heart; to turn our lives over to Jesus once and for all – we have to admit to ourselves that who we are, who we have become, how we are living our lives falls so way short of the mark.

Now, is Jesus only looking for people who are failures? No! But there comes a point where despite any outward success we may have and lots of people have lots of successes – we need to admit to ourselves that, yes, there is a God and yes, some of the stuff we are into isn’t pleasing to Him and yes, if we want to lay hold of this amazing life He has for us, then it’s time to change our hearts and our minds and our lives and our ways.

And that immediately brings up this prospect of, well, “If I have to change some things in my life, then I have to give things up for Jesus! Man! This God, I’m sure He doesn’t want me to have any fun in life.” That’s how it felt for me way back when. And I look back on that now and think to myself, “Well, how could I have thought that; how could I have had that idea?” But that is knowing what I know now and I didn’t know those things back then.

I didn’t have the benefit of walking with Jesus for the past twenty years and realising how much fun He does want me to have – even though sometimes the going gets tough. I mean, I can’t deny that. I didn’t realise back then how those few things that I was clinging on to – my pride, my selfishness, my anger (they were my big ones) – were robbing me of life.

Now, I don’t care if you are someone who has never in their wildest dreams imagined giving their lives over to Jesus, or someone whose struggling with that and you are right at the moment, wondering whether that’s what you want to do, or someone who has been warming the pews of a church with your backside for the last half a century or more, we all have stuff. Listen – we all have stuff that we want to hang onto that is not pleasing to God.

And here’s my favourite executive summary of that stuff. You may have heard me pull this one out before and the reason I pull it out from time to time is that this executive summary of stuff that God calls sin, kind of whacks you in the face and brings you to your senses. Here it is – it comes from the contemporary Message translation of the Bible. It is Galatians chapter 5, verses 19 to 21. Paul writes to the Galatians:

Look, it is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalising everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community. I could go on. This isn’t the first time I have warned you, you know. If you use your freedom this way, you will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Now, I’m kind of pretty sure you recognised one or two of those things in your own life – temper, loveless, competitiveness, de-personalisation … all that garbage. And if we are going to be honest with ourselves – as tightly as we hang onto those things; as much as we justify let’s say, our anger; as much as we have been duped into believing that those things are essential for our lives – actually, the things in that list are just ruining our lives.

If we are overly competitive; if we always have to win, how many relationships are we going to have? How rich are our lives going to be? The bottom line is that God only asks us to give up the things; to repent of the things; to turn away from the things that are ruining our lives. Isn’t that a powerful insight? Sin is the stuff that ruins our lives – sin in the stuff that robs us of life and that’s what the devil wants for us:

The thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy but Jesus came that we may have live and have it in all its abundance.

So today, I believe Jesus wants a few of us to repent – to have a change of mind and a change heart and a change of life about some of the muck that we are hanging onto in our lives. Let me come back to the centrepiece of what we have been sharing together and talking together on the programme these last few weeks. Jesus is saying to us:

Be earnest, therefore, and repent. Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you; I will eat with you, and you with me.

And my prayer for each one of us today is that the Spirit of God is writing His truth and His love and His mercy and His grace on our hearts right now. I’m believing that there are a good few of us whom Jesus is calling right now to repent. You can feeling Him knocking at the door of your heart; you can hear His voice and His Word – you just know He is calling you to a place of giving up those few bits of muck that you have been hanging onto for dear life, duped by the devil into believing that they are essential for your existence, when all along … all along, like a cancer, they have been spreading throughout you, making you sicker and sicker. I believe there are men and women and children listening to this message right around the world today, whose hearts are fit to break as you have heard God’s Word. You have grieved at the realisation of the sin you have been clinging onto.

Well, before we pray a prayer of repentance – a turning point prayer together – God wants you to know this from His Word – Second Corinthians chapter 7, verse 10:

Godly grief produces repentance that leads to salvation and brings no regrets, but worldly grief produces death.

Father God,
We have heard you speak to us today. We are cut to the quick over our rebellion against you. Forgive us we ask, in Jesus name. We believe Jesus is Your Son, that He died for us, that He rose again. That when we put our trust in Him we are completely forgiven. We’re sorry for all that we’ve done. We accept you Jesus, as our Lord and Saviour, at this very moment in an earnest change of heart and change of mind. From this moment forward everything we are, all that we have, every hope, every dream we give to you. From this moment forward we live our lives for you and with you and in you. In Jesus name we come.
Amen.

Taking the Tough Decisions

That’s powerful stuff and if you prayed that prayer, you are going to be so blessed in your life. The devil will come after you, sure. Become part of a Bible believing church. Be encouraged by fellow believers and God is going to do some amazing things with your life.

Now look, sometimes in life we do have to take some tough decisions because repenting once is not where it is at. We need to repent over and over again because we are always making mistakes.

I saw a man interviewed recently on the News, from somewhere in the U.S. A heavy piece of machinery had fallen on his foot, way out in the middle of nowhere and so, since nobody was going to be able to find him and since he would surely die if he stayed where he was, he cut his toes off with his pocket knife. So, that’s a tough decision.

And we, day by day, need to make some difficult decisions. And there’s one decision that the vast majority of us try to avoid. It’s a decision we need to take … one we desperately need to take, almost on a daily basis but one which we almost avoid, because it feels a bit like … cutting our toes off!! Can you guess what that decision might be? Here it is: it’s deciding that we have made a mistake; it’s admitting to ourselves and to other people that we were wrong. We hate being wrong, most of us. Sometimes we are wrong over big things, sometimes we are wrong over little things – but the idea of admitting that you are wrong, cutting your losses and moving on, can be a hard one to come to grips with.

And so, having just spoken about repentance – that big act of turning away from sin and turning to Jesus – I want to talk now about our ongoing life in Christ because as I said, repentance is something that needs to happen over and over again. And the quicker we can come to our senses and admit we are wrong, cut our losses, move on, the better things are.

When we discover and act on failure quickly, it is by far the best policy and in fact, it’s something you find in the Bible. Have a listen with me to this familiar story, to most of us. Luke chapter 15, beginning at verse 11:

There was a man who had two sons. The younger of them said to, ‘Dad, give me my share of the property and all that belongs to me.’ So the father divided the property between the sons. A few days later the younger son gathered all he had, travelled to a distant land, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living. When he had spent everything, there was a severe famine and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed his pigs.

He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; but no one gave him a thing. Then he came to himself – he came to his senses and he said, ‘How many of my dad’s hired hands have enough bread to eat and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! I know what I’ll do, I will get up, go to my dad and I will say to him, ‘Dad, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am not worthy to be your son anymore; treat me like one of your servants.’

So he set off and went to his dad. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. Then the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quick, bring out a robe – the best one – and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost but now he is found!’ and they began to celebrate.

You and I are often like that young man – we make some stupid choices in our lives. Have you made some choices and found yourself wearing the consequences? Me too! And just like it’s hard to admit that we are wrong and say sorry to someone, even over little things, it’s about ten thousand times harder to admit we are wrong and turn back to God. Because like the Prodigal Son we have some pretty low expectations of who God is and what He is like. Remember what the Prodigal Son said:

I’ll get up and go to my father and say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am not worthy to be called your son any more; treat me like one of your hired hands.’

Let’s give the young man in the story some serious credit. Even though he has this low set of expectations of his father, he still comes to his senses and goes back. And as we saw in the rest of the story, dad was standing by the letter box waiting for his lad to come home. He races out, kisses him, blesses him, dresses him, throws a party, they kill a fatted calf (which is an incredible honour) they whacked the sound system on high and they partied!

The young man delivered his pre-rehearsed speech but his father didn’t utter a single word of condemnation – nothing, because his father was absolutely over the moon that his son was back. And the whole point of Jesus telling us that story was to say, “That’s what My Dad is like. That’s what God is like. You don’t have to have low expectations. He is waiting with open arms to welcome you back and to receive you.”

So to anyone who is sitting in some smelly old pig pen, starving at the moment, struggling with the decision of admitting that they are wrong and trying to think, ‘Can I possibly turn back to God?’ For anyone who is wondering whether they should stop the loss, crystallise the loss, cut their losses, go back to the blessing. This is what Jesus has to say to you today:

Come to your senses the way the young man in the story came to his senses. Repent; turn away from the life that is robbing you of the treasures that your Father has planned for you in His house and come back to God. No condemnation, no punishment, no lecture, no wagging a big stick – just a Father; your Father in heaven who is standing out there by the letter box, craning His neck, waiting to see if your are coming back over the hill to Him today – just a Father who wants to dress you and bless you and throw a party because you are back.

As we are going to see soon, this is what’s going to happen the moment one sinner repents, the moment one sinner comes back to his Dad through an earnest change of heart and change of mind and change of life – heaven is going to stop, because friend, it’s party time.

A Time to Party

I made some decisions in my early twenties that caused me to turn away from God. It wasn’t exactly the same as that young man, that Prodigal Son in Jesus parable that we looked at earlier, but the idea was pretty much the same. I, like that Prodigal Son walked away from God’s blessing and found myself spiritually and emotionally, in a dark and desperate place – just as that son did amongst the pigs, starving.

And the problem is, we can get used to that place; we can get used to the smell. We accept it because the alternative is admitting that we are wrong; the alternative is cutting our losses and going back to the place where we know the blessing will be. It’s a bit like the man I mentioned earlier in the programme, who was caught; pinned under the heavy machinery and to save himself, had to cut his toes off – it feels a bit like that.

See, when I did that, I believed in Jesus but I started to live a life that didn’t honour God – I walked away. I decided to live my way, in a sense, like the Prodigal Son who demanded his inheritance from his father and then headed off to live THE LIFE. At least that’s what he thought! And little by little, life descended to a point that was lower than low; even though I had money and a big house and a nice car but again, that’s not what life is about. Those aren’t the things that make us happy. And like the Prodigal Son, I stayed there because I had low expectations of God. I always kind of knew God was there but I was afraid to turn back and had too much pride to turn back. So I lived in that rotten place for a good couple of decades before I finally came to my senses. Crazy now, but that’s what I did.

Now, along with this story of the Prodigal Son – in fact, just before that story – Jesus tells two much shorted stories and I would like to have a look at those right now. Because I know that, well, the decision to turn our lives around, away from our stupid mistakes and their consequences and back to God – they can be tough decisions. And the best way I know to make it easier for you, whatever part of your life needs turning back to God today, is by sharing God’s Word with you because there is such power in God’s Word – power to change lives as the Holy Spirit lifts the Word off the page and writes it on our hearts.

So, as we have a look at those two short parables that Jesus told, I’m believing that some lives are going to be restored and healed and turned around today. The first story is this – Luke chapter 15, verse 1:

Now all the tax collectors and the sinners were coming near and listening to Jesus. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This Jesus fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” So Jesus told them this parable: “Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and he rejoices and he comes home, he calls his friends and neighbours together, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’ Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who need no repentance.

What’s the context of this situation He is speaking into? The self-righteous, pious, holier-than-thou, religious hierarchy were having a whinge that instead of spending His time with them, this miracle man Jesus, was hanging around a bunch of sinners. And so He tells this story about a lost sheep which spoke right into the agrarian culture and mind-set of the day.

Being a shepherd was a big deal. A shepherd protected his sheep with his life. If you had a hundred sheep in your care, you did not come home at night one sheep short. You did whatever you had to do to go find that lost sheep and bring it back to the fold. That’s just how things were.

And Jesus is saying, in effect, “Well, God is like that. I came to find that one lost sheep; that one sinner and bring them home. That’s the whole reason I’m here – not to hang around with the people who are well but to hang around with the people who need my help.” And by the way, just in case you don’t get it (and quite obviously they didn’t get it) He says in Luke chapter 15, verse 7:

I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety nine righteous people who need no repentance.

See, that’s the heart of God for you and me. When you and I have blown it and we know it, He comes out looking for us. Perhaps that’s exactly what He is doing right now with you, as you hear His Word today.

Um, still a bit hard to get a handle on? Here’s the second story that Jesus told. Luke chapter 15, verse 8 – He says:

Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbours, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’ Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over just one sinner who repents.

So guys, Jesus is saying, just in case you didn’t get it the first time, here it is again: imagine this woman, she loses what to her, was a large sum of money – a silver coin. She turns the place upside down, she finds it – okay, she still had the nine, but imagine her joy at finding the tenth one again.

Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels over just one sinner who repents.

And then finally of course, the story of the Prodigal Son that we looked at earlier. But the bit that we didn’t look at was the bad reaction of the brother – the older brother – who sees this snooty kid who went and blew his inheritance and dishonoured his father and when he comes back from a hard day’s work in the field, he discovers that, not only has that brat returned, but the old man was throwing him a party! Not surprisingly, he doesn’t react too well to that and has a tantrum and he refuses to come inside.

Well, wouldn’t you? So … so what does dad say to this older brother in Jesus parable? Luke chapter 15, verses 31 and 32:

The father said to the older brother, “Son, you were always with me and all that is mine is yours but we had to celebrate and rejoice because this brother of yours was dead and has come back to life again; he was lost but now he is found.

Do you see? Three times the same thing – do you get it? Has the Holy Spirit got it through to us yet? If you are hanging out there wondering whether you should turn back; whether you should repent; whether you should turn away from your sin and come back to God through the grace and the mercy and the sacrifice and the love and the forgiveness you have in Jesus Christ, God is speaking to you today. “Come home to Me, I love you, I love you, I love you. Come home to Me. I can’t wait to have you back. In fact, child, heaven is ready for you. Heaven is ready to have a party.”

My friend, Jesus today, is standing at the door of your heart and He is knocking. Will you answer? Will you open the door? Will you let Him in? Will you come back?