Revelation 3:14-22 Making Jesus Hurt

You are listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Mattawan, Michigan. Good morning, welcome to Recast Church. I'm Don Felsick, I'm the lead pastor here. I'm glad that you're here because without us being here, we wouldn't have a church, right?

So I'm glad that you're here. Every Sunday morning I arrive. I arrive here about 8 .30, I don't know how many of you know this, but I get here about 8 .30 and I usually just walk around the school and pray for about an hour.

And I pray for the church. And I think it's important for us to understand that when I'm praying for the church, I'm not praying for a building, I'm not praying for a set of programs, but I am praying for people.

I'm praying for you. I don't know every Sunday who's gonna show up and who's gonna be here, but I am praying for you, I'm praying for us, I'm praying for what God desires to do in us, in us this week through the hearing of his word and in us through this week through acting on his word as well.

And so I'm praying often for you by name as God brings you to mind, but then also for our church in general and for those who are gonna be visiting with us this morning. And so welcome, I'm glad that you're here.

If this is your first time with us, I ask you to please fill out that connection card that you received when you walked in. You can turn that in in the black box back there. And then also see Haley about a free gift that's provided for you there.

So check that out at the welcome table that's out there. Any offerings that anybody chooses to give, also go in that black box that's out there. We don't pass an offering plate here. We do that intentionally, not to disparage other churches that do that, but I've often, have any of you ever been in a situation where the plate passes and you feel like that pressure to put something in it?

And we don't want anybody to give out of that pressure. We want you to give out of an act of worship to God that it's intentional that you're doing that. And so that envelope is provided for you. Don't feel the pressure from the envelope either.

But the envelope can just be recycled out there if you're not gonna use it this morning. Otherwise, if you do choose to use that, it goes in that same black box where the connection cards go out there.

Laodicea as the Self-Sufficient Church

So with those details out of the way, this morning we're gonna be looking at the last of the seven churches in the book of Revelation that Jesus is auditing. I mean, if you think about these in terms of an audit or a sit down talk with these churches, evaluating how they're doing, this is the last one of seven that he's been dealing with.

And Jesus this morning isn't gonna pull any punches. Now we've seen him talk to a suffering church with gentleness. We've seen him talk to a loveless church with a bit of a stern attitude towards them, saying you need to grow in your love and return to the love that you had at first.

We've seen him, a variety of different aspects of the way that Jesus interacts with different people, different churches at different times. But he doesn't pull punches here. He doesn't kid glove the church of Laodicea.

The soft and gentle Jesus that our culture often wants to espouse and push forward. If it's ever in our culture popular to talk about Jesus, then it's most often the Jesus who is very tolerant. He looks very American.

He looks very much like the culture around us. Have you ever noticed that Jesus sometimes begins to be camouflaged in the terms of the culture around us and the way that things look? But that soft, gentle Jesus that's tolerant and always merciful and always accepts everyone, well that Jesus doesn't show up in this text.

He's not here. He doesn't make any guest appearances. Instead, Jesus outright tells the church of Laodicea here in our text in no uncertain terms, you make me sick. Now that might be a startling comment from Jesus to a church, and yet that's exactly what he says.

He says in Greek, you make me sick. And what makes Jesus sick may surprise us and really bring this message home to us this morning in that it's not the things that maybe, maybe we ought to be convicted that the things that often make us sick about our culture, the things that frustrate us the most are not necessarily always the things that make Jesus the most sick.

Because the very thing that makes Jesus sick regarding Laodicea is I would suggest to you a common struggle in most American churches. It's a common struggle for you and I. So when we recognize that this letter is written to churches, but I give you full permission to apply this message to yourself.

Once we walk through it, once we study it, once we know what Jesus is saying to the churches, then we need to remember, as I said at the beginning, that when I'm praying for the church, I'm not praying for some general organization or some corporate entity.

I'm praying for people. The church is people. So what Jesus says here to the church is to real individuals, including you and I. So these are things that he is indicting us on, things that he's saying, watch your life and consider these things regarding what I have to say to Laodicea while you recast, should be thinking about it, recast being us, the people of recast church.

And of all the seven churches, the one that I believe preaches the most directly to the average church in America is this last one, the church in Laodicea. Because Laodicea is, as I've mentioned, Ephesus was the loveless church, Pergamum was the compromised church, Thyatira, the polluted church.

All of these churches had a bit of a slant that Jesus was addressing with them, but Laodicea is the self-sufficient church. They don't need anything. They've got it all well in hand, they're organized, they've got something to offer God, they've got something to bring to the table, and they are eager to please Jesus with all of their efforts and the things that they are able to do.

And Jesus says, you're self-sufficient, and I'm on the outside. By the end of this text, we're gonna see that actually the church was so self-sufficient that they really didn't need Jesus to keep doing what they were doing.

And he's gonna say, I'm on the outside, and I'm knocking. I'm knocking, and I'd like to come in and fellowship with you if you'd have me. If you'd let me come in, man, we could have fellowship, and we could be together in this effort, but instead, you've left me out in your self-sufficiency.

This is a church that believes and outright declares, I don't need anything. And Jesus has a very different assessment of them. The church thinks that they're doing just fine. They don't need his help.

And as a matter of fact, maybe a church like this has the mindset that maybe Jesus just needs a little something from us. Maybe he's the one who needs the help. And although we might not state it directly, although that might rub us the wrong way, in practice, I would suggest to you that maybe some of us even live our lives that way.

Maybe Jesus needs something from us, and we've got a lot to offer him. And man, is he lucky to have us. Does that sound a little American? Does that sound a little like the American church? Sounds a little like me.

Sounds like me from time to time. I can live that way as well. So God forbid that we be found in a place as a church where Jesus is left on the outside knocking, saying, hey, if somebody would come and open the door, I'd come in.

If you'd just welcome me, I'd be in there, where he's left out, and we go about the busyness of serving him in our own strength. And yet I'm afraid that we may all find deep conviction in the words of Jesus this morning as we dig into this text.

So as we read, we're gonna sing some songs, and then we dig into God's word. Please open your heart to what God wants to communicate to you this morning from this text. So let's open our Bibles to Revelation chapter three.

We're gonna be looking at verses 14 to 22 to the end of that chapter. Again, that's Revelation three, 14 to 22. If you have a device to navigate over there, if you have a Bible, check it out. If you don't have any of those on your lap and you're not able to follow along in the reading, if you'd just do me a favor and raise your hand, I'm not trying to call you out.

We just have some Bibles back here that someone's willing to hand out. We want everybody to have a copy of the word of God on their lap so that you can actually see these things and follow along. But Revelation three, 14 through 22, let's read what God desires for you and I to hear from him.

This is his word, his revelation to you and me this morning. And to the angel of the church in Laodicea, write the words of thee, amen. The faithful and true witness, the beginning of God's creation. I know your works.

You are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot. So because you are lukewarm and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.

I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire so that you may be rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself, and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen, and salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see.

Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline. So be zealous and repent. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come into him and eat with him and he with me.

The one who conquers, I will grant him to sit with me on my throne as I also conquered and sat down with my father on his throne. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. Let's pray as the band comes to lead us in worship this morning.

Father, we need your presence here with us. We have so many things that clamor and are moving around in our minds right now, so many things that would draw our attention away from you. And so, Father, I pray that even as we have an opportunity in music to sing before you, Father, that you would allow that to be refining, focusing for us this morning, that this would be an opportunity for us to regain that perspective that we often lose throughout the week, that you are worthy of our fervor, you are worthy of our zeal, you are worthy of an offering.

Father, I pray that our worship would be indeed that, it would be an offering to you in worship this morning, not that we have something to give to you, but you are worthy of it. And so, Father, just even encountering you would move in our hearts to worship you this morning.

Father, we don't wanna be a self-sufficient people. We see in your word that you declare for us to not be self-sufficient, but to lean on you, and yet we find ourselves all often throughout the week moving in that direction.

So, Father, would you transform us by the hearing of your word that we might go out and live a dependent life upon you in Jesus' name, amen. You can stand up if you need to. If the chair gets uncomfortable, get up in the back and stretch out.

I'm rarely distracted by anyone. That doesn't mean you can keep your cell phone on, but yeah, and if you need to use the restrooms, go out the door and use the restrooms on this end of the building, please.

We wanna reserve the restrooms. Those of you who are familiar with the building, there are restrooms down here, but we wanna keep those for the children's ministry only. So, a men's restroom is upstairs, and the women's is downstairs on this end of the building.

So, if you need that, take advantage of that. But keep your Bibles open to Revelation chapter three, verses 14 to 22. I'd like for you to have that on your lap so that you can reference it, look at it, see it, actually identify that that is what we're talking about and working through, and you've got it on your lap there.

American Independence and Laodicea’s Self-Reliance

Think about this with me for just a moment. To be an American is to have a can-do-it spirit, right? Would you agree with me on that? That's just fundamental to our culture. That's just a part of who we are.

You know, we say things like, if at first you don't succeed, yeah, you got it. Or even more to the heart of the attitude, maybe there is no try, and so to the real heart of it, Yoda himself, that great American Jedi, who said, do or do not, there is no try.

Okay, so it's got a just-do-it attitude, just like Nike, right? Is it Nike or Nike? Nike, thank you. Okay, just wanted to clarify that for some of you, that it is Nike. There's a little debate going on.

That was a personal inside joke. But it is Nike, right? But yeah, just do it, right? We have a I-don't-need-anyone-to-assist-me kind of attitude. I don't need anyone. If you want something done, it's best done yourself, right?

You've got these sayings. And a lot of people have said, you can tell a culture by their sayings, right? Have you ever heard that before? You can tell what is core, what is central to a people by the quips and the quick sayings and the idioms that they use and things like that.

And so you can tell a lot about us by that. And I believe that to a large degree, we as a culture in America are so completely saturated in a radical independence that starts from childhood on the way up that it's often difficult to identify it because it is such a strong part of our lives.

It's like the fish swimming in the water who doesn't know what water is, right? Because it doesn't define water because hey, it's just part and parcel of daily life. And I think that's the way independence is to most of us.

It's very hard for us, in other words, to pull back and look at our own lives and identify how radically independent we really actually are in our core, how radically independent we feel. Now, I've even found myself thinking, as I was trying to think and just let, I really try and I pray every week that God would convict me first before I ever have to stand up here and share these words with you because if I'm standing up here and this hasn't hit me where I live, then I don't really have a passion or a zeal to be able to share it with you in the way that it ought because this is powerful, this is the word of God and it should, first and foremost, impact me as I'm studying it.

But I began to, so I began to think about my own independence in the way that I think and the way that I process stuff and I found my heart quick to justify myself as if to say, I'm not self-sufficient, I just like to get stuff done, right?

Can anybody relate to that statement? Like, I'm not self-sufficient, I mean, I just like to get stuff done or I'm not too independent, I mean, I'm willing to tell other people what to do from time to time.

So, you know, I've got relationships, I mean, I can tell others what to do and that's, no, that's not the heart of it. If we take an honest assessment of our own hearts right now at the start of this message and ask yourself, how do you feel about asking for help?

So that's a fundamental place to start. How do you feel about asking others for help? Maybe further step, further question, how often do you actually ask others for help? How often do you think this phrase, I don't have what it takes, I don't have what it takes, I need someone else?

Now, some of you are kind of going, well, that's starting to get a little closer to home and maybe you do feel that in your core because the fact of the matter is even in our radical independence, there's a lot of insecurities in our heart, would you identify that?

But you might feel it, but how often do you admit it that you don't have what it takes? That's not very American, to admit that I don't have what it takes. So I say all of that to say, men, we are close to the church in Laodicea.

Laodicea was a radically independent and self-sufficient city. As a matter of fact, the city was so self-sufficient that when it was destroyed by an earthquake, now you'll catch a theme as I preach through these seven churches, there was one, you'll get a picture that there was one massive earthquake that leveled Western Turkey during the first century AD and it was a massive earthquake and it leveled this area.

Laodicea suffered greatly, almost a complete loss of the city structures during this time. FEMA stepped in to fix everything. That wasn't really FEMA, that's a joke. But the Roman Empire literally did step in and offered support for the rebuilding of Laodicea, a key Roman city, and they rejected it.

They said it'd be like New Orleans after Katrina saying, you know what, we'll do better than the federal government will in our rebuilding. We've got this one, we've got the resources. And historians actually say that Laodicea was rebuilt with their own resources and it was rebuilt extravagantly, increasingly, exponentially better than the original city ever was.

And they never once leaned on Rome for the funds to rebuild. This is a city that knew what it meant to reject assistance, knew what it meant to reject help. We're gonna see that that had an impact on the church.

It was a city, by the way, that was renowned for medical practice, especially the development of eye salves used to help with various eye issues of the day. And so they also had a bustling wool trade and the black wool of Laodicea was in demand all over the Roman Empire.

This was what was worn on the red carpets. This is what they spun the fashion out of of the day. And so the red carpet for whatever, the Grammys, Emmys, whatever, all of those awards, and you see all the fashion and stuff.

And Laodicea was in the center of that bustling industry. They said that maybe there was something, it was actually a rumor that there was something in the volcanic soil that when it produced the plants, that it just made extravagant wool on these animals that lived around Laodicea.

They didn't really know what it was, but man, the wool that came out of this place was the center of fashion. They produced fine clothing, but not only that, but they had the hoity-toity citizens that were able to afford the fine clothing as well.

It's identified from ancient historians that many of the citizens were the equivalent of millionaires in our day and age. So they were extremely wealthy individuals in the city of Laodicea. One particular citizen recorded in history was wealthy enough to literally buy his way into royalty by individually sponsoring an entire temple.

So he built a temple to one of the gods and was declared, well, you know what, bro, you can be a prince because you're so wealthy. That kind of thing was going on in Laodicea. And so with all this wealth, can you blame them for their independence?

I mean, can you blame them for not reaching out for help? For being so self-sufficient? I mean, they weren't pretending to be powerful. They just really were, right? And Jesus, of all people, should have been able to see it wasn't their fault for being so good, right?

It's meant to be sarcastic, you guys. And to a church in this context then, with that kind of radical self-sufficiency, with that kind of resources available to them, Jesus writes to them and wants to remind them a few things about himself first.

He sets the stage and says, I wanna tell you about me. Let me tell you who's talking to you for just a second. He says, I am the amen, the faithful and true witness. I'm the primary over God's creation.

Jesus doesn't ever waste words, and he introduces himself this way, in a really colorful way. I'm the ending and the beginning, is what he's ultimately getting at. And he says, I rightly identify truth because the things that I say actually match up with reality.

And I've mentioned a few times in this that God knows you better than you know yourself. Some of us have this notion about what motivates us, and we think we're pretty keyed in on who we are. And how many of you have taken some personality assessments or personality profiles and revealed some stuff about yourself?

And maybe you've gotten into doing some of that stuff or through your employer, and you're getting honed in on the idea and focusing on who you are, and we don't scratch the surface of what motivates us and who we are.

How many of you have ever just been confused by yourself? And confused by your own motivations? You're like, why did I do that again? I know a punter who's probably confused about some things that he did yesterday.

I mean, just in case anybody was into watching a little something, I think he's probably wondering what was going on there. Sorry. Poor guy. Man, you know, we ought to pray for that kid. For real. No, I'm just being serious.

I mean, he's got a lot of, I'm sure he's just frustrated with himself. But anyways. And then, that was not in the notes, you guys. I'm serious. Now I'm totally lost. And it is gonna take me a second to get this.

Jesus, identifying himself, sorry. He's the truth, and what he says actually matches up with reality. That's where we're going with this. So he knows us better than we even know ourselves. So when he says something is true of someone, it's reality about that person.

Are you getting me? That's what he's saying. I'm the faithful and true witness. And by the way, when he says he's faithful witness, he's saying I'm faithful to testify about things. I actually do talk.

Like, you could be an eyewitness to an account, but if you're not faithful to testify, guess what? It doesn't even matter that you were an eyewitness to the events. So you've gotta be faithful to testify first, but then you also have to be true in what you testify.

So when he says I'm faithful, and I'm the faithful and true witness, I am willing to say reality, and I do speak it. I actually do both. And then, by calling himself the, amen. Not a title that's used often in scripture.

As a matter of fact, it only occurs twice as a title, once for God in the Old Testament, once for Jesus in the New Testament. See a little something there theologically? Identified of God, he is the amen in the Old Testament, the father, and of the son in the New Testament.

Making equivalence between the two of them. But what's it mean to be the so be it? Direct translation from amen, when we say that at the end of a prayer, you're saying may it be as it has been declared.

May these things be the way that they are, they've been spoken. So he says I'm the so be it. In other words, Jesus is the final word. He is the seal that accomplishes the future. He is the one that makes it come to pass.

And he is not, by the way, the first created thing, as it might appear or sound like in English when it talks about the beginning of creation. But he is the primary. That word beginning can be primary or ruler or first in preeminence.

In other words, he is the preeminent of God's creation. And Laodicea is about to get a rude awakening. They're about to be shaken from what they thought was reality to what is true. And so Jesus makes sure to clarify that he is the standard for assessment.

He is the standard for auditing churches. He is the standard for auditing lives. And he has the right to tell us what is true of us. Praise God that he's willing to, that he's the faithful and true witness that is willing to not allow us to be mired down in our sin but is willing to come in with conviction, with authority to tell us what is right and wrong.

We live in a culture that has no authority, that has no framework, that has no foundation for right and wrong. But Christ is the foundation. He is the standard and the judge who has the right to say what is true of you and I.

And he's gonna declare it here in this text, at least towards Laodicea and some cautions toward us as we take on his indictment of this church. Have you ever been assessed by someone else and thought that's your opinion, in all honesty, in your mind?

You're like, you know what? You're entitled to think and view me how you want but that's not right. That's not the right assessment. And I wanna tell you, we should always be open to learning from criticism of others.

But if you've ever been like me, criticized by someone who barely knows you. I have some people who interact with me regularly on Facebook, I haven't seen them in 15 to 20 years. Everything they say is always negative.

I haven't unfriended them because I don't know why. But have you ever had that person? Maybe some of you have that person in your life. I think probably most of us do. Always critical. Or someone who you haven't seen in years and they just come in storming, I know you and I know this and I know that.

And it's like, bro, I haven't seen you since high school. Really? Is this where you're gonna go with this? Get to know me before you just start criticizing me. But that's not what's going on here. It's not someone who barely knows this church that's gonna indict them.

Jesus says to Laodicea, I know you and you can trust my assessment. So here it goes. I know your works, Jesus starts off saying. I know your works. Jesus sees the deeds of his people according to verse 15.

But for Laodicea, he identified that their deeds are lacking something. Something significant. They are neither cold nor hot. And Jesus wishes, he says I would that you were hot or cold. Which has been confusing to people and we're gonna get there in a second.

But instead of being hot or cold, they are lukewarm. And again he emphasizes for effect a couple different times. You are neither hot nor cold. So he says, I'm gonna spew you out of my mouth. I'm gonna spit you out of my mouth according to the ESV translation.

But spit is a really nice gentle term here. It's really kind and it is not accurate. And not every time that the words are translated. And I don't wanna give you the impression that every single time you see, you read the Bible, you're reading it wrong or something.

I mean it's just a gentler way of saying this phrase. But at the same time, this is a medical term. We still use this in modern medicine today. We get the word emitic from this word in Greek. So those of you who are trained in medicine or have any kind of medical knowledge, all of a sudden you had a thought when I said emitic.

Right? Because it has something to do with blowing chunks, okay? This is not a gentle swish of the mouth forcing your mouthwash out before a meeting in the morning. This is where I get to use more juvenile terms, okay?

I get to throw in a couple of juvenile terms in the middle of this message and say things like chunder or yak or blow chunks or barf, okay? Or yawk, was that the one, Dave? What was it? Yeah, yak, okay, whatever.

But seriously, Jesus is saying to this church, he's not saying, oh, I'm gonna spit you out of my mouth. He's saying, you make me sick. That's pretty, I mean I think that's like a bit harsh in the Greek, okay?

You make me sick. You, when I see you, when I see your works, it makes me want to blow chunks. And it's like, what? Really, Jesus is saying this. You make me want to go to the medicine cabinet and get some Pepto, Pepto-Bismol.

Which ironically is the way that you could get me to throw up on the spot. You give me Pepto-Bismol, I will throw up even at the smell of the stuff. It goes back to childhood memories, I don't know. It's a bit messed up.

But the thing that's supposed to make you well makes me sick. So, now I know what I'm getting for Christmas from some of you. But, please no, please no. Even those little candies, do you ever have the little, there's those little pink candies that taste like Pepto, never mind.

But, sorry. But we need to work a bit to make some sense of what the problem is with the church in Laodicea. Because the phrase, you know, the phrase hot and cold, and he says, I wish you were neither hot nor, I wish that you were either hot or cold.

And when he says, I wish you were cold, it's like, wait a minute, I thought that he would like maybe a little bit of life in us, right? If you had a little bit of heat, that would be good. If you had a little bit of spiritual fervor, you had just a little bit of spiritual friction in your life to produce a little bit of heat, how many of you think that's better than being spiritually dead?

Spiritually lifeless, spiritually cold? Does that sound right to you? So, what is he getting at here? And in this church, further, it appears that they were doing some works, right? Do you see that in the text?

I know your deeds, I know the works that you're doing. So laziness doesn't seem to be the problem in Laodicea. But instead, what Jesus is zeroing in on is this hot and cold issue. Their works were lukewarm.

And this is where historians and archeologists help us make sense and better understand the scriptures. You see, for many years, Christians wrestled with why Jesus would prefer that you were completely cold spiritually, instead of at least a little alive spiritually, have just, like I said, a little bit of spiritual heat there.

Because Jesus said things like, if you have even the faith of a mustard seed, you could do amazing things for the kingdom. So all of a sudden, is he saying, you either need to have spiritually, you need to be at the spiritual boiling point, or else you should have nothing.

That doesn't seem to make sense of Jesus. But once you understand from archeology and from history, the water supply of the city of Laodicea, the things begin to snap into focus for us. The water supply to the city of Laodicea was, in a word, nasty.

It came from a hot spring that was rich in minerals, traveled about five miles to the city in hot pipes and exposed aqueducts for most of that. People from that era testified that the water had a foul odor and was basically a perfect lukewarm temperature by the time that it arrived.

Now, I can say this, my in-laws live over in Battle Creek, and I think if you've been around West Michigan, some of the water smells like sulfur over in certain areas. Have you ever had that? Maybe some of you have that in your home.

I know that it really varies from just neighborhood to neighborhood what the water quality is. I lived in a neighborhood called Brownstone for a while for a reason, because anything that the water touched turned brown from the rust.

So, but have you ever drank lukewarm mineral water? Ugh, gross, right? Like, the flavor really is enhanced by the temperature. Do you know what I'm talking about? And I can drink, at my in-laws house, I can drink their sulfur water just fine if it's just frigid, like near freezing, then I can gulp it down and I can survive it, okay?

But you get that stuff anywhere near even just chilled a little bit, and oh man, it is nasty, I can barely gag it down, even after a run, okay? I'd rather have a Coke after a run there than water. But that's just the way that it is, and that's the way it is in some places.

So that's kind of like the water here in this area. And even today, in this area of modern day Turkey, due to the volcanic activity, so you're dealing with wells that go down deep, and then you're dealing with a volcanic area where there's magma closer, the crust of the earth is thinner in this area, so they still have to chill their water.

If you have a well in this area of the world, you still chill your water before you drink it. Even if it's just to put it in cans and jars and setting it in the shade, it has to be cooled. It comes out of the ground naturally at a higher temperature.

So that's the way that the water supply was in Laodicea. It was lukewarm. Colossae, about 10 miles to the east, had one of the only cool freshwater springs in the entire area. To the north, about seven miles, Hierapolis was famous for its hot springs that were used medicinally, and people would go there to chill and relax, think hot tub.

So Jesus here is saying, I wish you were like the hot water that is used for soothing aching muscles, useful, at least for something, or that you were like the cool water that refreshes and helps quench thirst, useful for something.

But you are not of any true help either way. Hot water? How many of you like to have hot water? Grateful for hot water? How many of you like to have cool water? Depends on context, right? Both are a positive thing.

Both are useful, just in their own rights and in their own ways. So this is not a spiritual measurement. This is a useful measurement. How useful are you being? And he says, you, Laodicea, you're not useful.

You're not useful to benefit others. You're not useful to benefit anything. This lukewarmness is further defined in verses 17 and 18 by defining deeper what was the issue, what was wrong. How do we do works that are useless?

You know, take for example, feeding the poor. It seems like as long as you're feeding the poor, isn't that good and helpful no matter what motivates the person who's doing it? Doesn't it seem like something good happens there no matter what?

But not in the eyes of the true and faithful witness. In the eyes of Jesus, the value of our works are compared by an invisible non-human standard. So we might look at somebody's works and go, man, they are a good person.

They're just fabulous. But like the song we sang earlier, it's about an inside-out transformation. What do you know, bad people can do good things. Often good people can do bad things. And Jesus is the one who holds the answer to whether you're a good person or a bad person.

Did you know that? It's by his assessment. We're gonna see that it has something to do with where he is in relationship to your life. Is he outside knocking or is he in here, transforming from the inside out?

That's key. What makes their works lukewarm begins with a wrong assessment, a wrong self-assessment. Their good works began with an assessment that they were rich and needed nothing, according to the text.