WWUTT 1875 Q&A The Chosen is Plausible, Spit You Out of My Mouth, Tomboys Revisited

The Chosen, Donations, and Show Notes

In what way does the show, The Chosen, contradict its own message? When Jesus told the church at Laodicea, I will spit you out of my mouth, what does that mean? The answers to these questions and others, When We Understand the Text.

This is When We Understand the Text, a daily Bible study that we may follow the sound words of our Lord God, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. Tell your friends about our ministry at www .wutt .com.

Here once again is Pastor Gabe.

Thank you, Becky. You're welcome. I was really, really hoping. Uh-huh. I was really hoping. Really hoping? This was going to be the week that we would get to record from home.

Oh, so close. I was hoping. We're closer.

We're closer. We're closer. Da-da-da-da. Now, this isn't the studio that I was working on that I made a video of. Nope. And posted on the Extra What channel. That project is still in the works, but it's going to take longer.

I posted that video in October. What happened just less than two weeks after that? Time change. Yeah. So, it gets dark at like 5 around here. Yeah. In western Kansas, that wasn't the case. Darkness, even in the winter months, was like 6, 630.

Yeah. And, yeah, it just gets darker here in east Texas. I mean, maybe for a week it was like 5. Yeah, something like that. Or 530. It was 530. It wasn't even 5. Yeah. I don't think it was ever 5 o 'clock.

But here in east Texas, it just gets dark earlier. So, when the time change happened, and then it's also getting colder. I'm getting home from work. It's already dark. I can't work on the studio. Mm-hmm.

And, let's see. Then, yeah, right after that was really cold. And then it was just like, man, I could not get a good weekend. It was either raining or I was sick. Or I was sick. Or you were sick. Yep.

You know, so I'm watching the kids, especially our one-year-old. Mm-hmm. And on and on it went. It just has not worked out for me to be able to work on this project. So, I finally got fed up, and I'm building a room in the garage.

Yep. Putting up walls and everything. When I get done with the studio outside, this room that I'm making in the garage will become Becky's sewing room. Yeah. I'm looking forward to that. So, there's still a good thing to have this room.

You know, something else that we can apply that to. Mm-hmm. But I'm still working on the studio that's going to be outside. It's off the house, but it's under the deck. We're enclosing under the deck is what I'm doing.

So, I still need to get that project done. Hopefully, that will happen in April or May or something. I don't know. It's been raining an awful lot. The weather's better. Yeah. This is already shaping out to be another one of those really wet seasons.

Yeah. Like we had a couple of years ago. Anyway, well, we appreciate your support and the donations that you've given to us. Definitely. To help get this project moving. Speaking of which, speaking of donations.

Mm-hmm. We got this email from Michael who says, I'm sorry that I could not give more at this time. So, we sent a gift. Mm-hmm. Thank you for your gift, Michael. Thank you. But in the future, I plan to give toward my local church in Rochester, New York.

Awesome. Along with your ministry. I look forward to your broadcast every day. Aw. Truly, thank you, Pastor Gabe and Becky. You both keep me moving forward in the race of faith. I truly appreciate and need both of ya.

Aw. Y-A-H. Both of ya. Ya. Thank you both. Please continue your blessed work. Great blessings to you and your family. Love with the heart of the Savior. Mm. Well, I appreciate that very much, Michael, and thank you for your gift.

Every little bit helps. Yes. Even if it's buying pizza for the kids. Yep. While I'm working on something else. That is so true. This is the Friday edition of the broadcast, and you can send your emails to us.

We take emails from the listeners. Email address is whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com. Mm-hmm. If you want to give to the ministry, like Mike did, you can go to wwutt .com, and there's the Give tab on there.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think it just you can either mail in a donation, like a check, the address is on there, or you can pay via PayPal. Mm-hmm. I know there's been issues with PayPal. I get it. But that's what we're still using.

Yeah. If you feel safe with PayPal, we're still taking PayPal donations. We're not a nonprofit. It's not a 501c3, so it's just kind of, yeah, scouts honor. Yeah. No, not scouts honor, but in the fear of the Lord.

There you go. That we will handle whatever contribution you give rightly and put it toward ministry that we do. Yes. Yeah. All right, let's get to a few other emails. Now, babe, I do have some audio today.

Oh. The audio might irritate you. Oh, great. But I've come up with a solution to this. You have? I have. We're going to close the show with some audio that's uplifting and encouraging. Okay. So you don't get done with the program going, I can't believe you made me listen to Andy Stanley again.

Oh, no, is it? Really? We do have something about Andy Stanley. I don't have audio of his. Great. It's something else. But anyway. Okay. Yeah. But just so you're not walking away from the program going, your moods, you know what I mean?

Yeah. I totally get it. I totally get it. It wasn't meant to be a dig. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. I get it. I get it. It's fine. It's good. We're good. You know, for the same reason we can't watch anything sad in the evening and you go to bed on that note.

Oh, no. No, no, no, no. Right. So we're not going to finish the show with audio that just makes you annoyed. I'm going to give you something a little more uplifting at the very end.

Well, maybe that'll help our listeners, too. You know, you just kind of err.

I've not had any complaints. Yeah, no. No. As far as I know. Yeah. Well, except for, you know, one or two that'll come in and go, I wish you would just focus on, you know, something. You don't have to be.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ripping on people all the time, which I don't. Most of this, most of the podcast is in the word of God. Right. That's Monday to Thursday.

And this is literally a Q &A. Right. I'm answering questions. Yeah. I'm answering a question that comes to me.

Dallas Jenkins, The Chosen, and What Counts as the Gospel

Speaking of which, let's get to this one here. This is from Vitas. V-I-T-A-S. Oh. Vitas. Hey, Pastor Gabe, I pray that you feel better this week. Yes, thank you. Yes. Thank you for that. Michelle Leslie had asked about that, too, on social media.

She asked how my voice was doing. So, every morning this week that I woke up, I had no voice at the start of the day. And gradually going through the day, my voice would come back. Tuesday was the hardest day, because I was teaching our women's group here at the church, which is in the morning.

So I had to get up earlier, knowing that I probably wasn't going to have a voice in the morning. I got up earlier and kind of worked on it a little bit. Took a really nice hot shower, so I'm breathing in that hot air, the hot, moist air, you know.

Getting cleared up and then was rehearsing it here in my office. I'm talking just to kind of get my voice going. I was still pretty congested when I started teaching, but by the end of the teaching, I had improved, noticeably had improved.

Good. So I'm thankful for that. Thank you for your prayers. I wasn't able to record any of the other episodes Monday to Thursday, hence why I was airing some older sermons. Today was a much, much better day, so I think I'm on the back end of that.

Yeah.

Well, I know on Wednesday night, you were starting to lose. Oh, was I toward the end? A little bit, yeah. And having a clear throat and stuff. End of the day is a struggle, too. Yeah.

Yeah. So Vetus goes on to say, however, while you played old sermons, I loved when you played the hymn at the end of the sermons. I would love if you could play a hymn after the sermons more. Just a suggestion, grace and peace to you.

You used to do that a lot. Yeah, I used to do that a lot. And I haven't done it pretty much since we moved to Texas. I haven't been doing that, adding the sermon to the end, or song to the end. But I did this past Sunday.

So I preached on Sunday out of Romans 9, verses 24 to 32. And the hymn that I played at the end of that was a song that our worship leader, Pastor Andrew, led during the worship service. And I just loved the song, and I thought it went well, even with the way that the sermon concluded.

So I threw that song in at the end of the sermon. So the sermon that was played on the broadcast this past Sunday, out of Romans 1, does have a song at the end. I haven't been regularly doing that. So I appreciate the suggestion, Vetus.

Yeah.

You always got good feedback from those. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

People loved the hymns. They asked who sang them, where did it come from. I would get emails about that. So I'm glad you like that. I just needed that reminder. Yeah. To grab a song and throw it on there.

Definitely. Yeah. But the one that was on there Sunday, that was actually our church. That was our choir and worship band and everything. Neat. If you listen to the sermons on the church website, fbclindale .com, either I'm preaching or Pastor Tom is preaching, but we've got the whole service on there now.

Oh, wow. So you're getting it from start to finish, the whole, what is it, 75-minute service. Yeah, something like that. Yep. This next question comes from Kari, either Kari or Kari, K-A-R-I. It could be either way.

Dear Pastor Gabe, you said that you were disappointed with Allie Beth Stuckey's interview with Dallas Jenkins on her show Relatable. I like listening to Allie's stuff, too. Can you say exactly what it was that you didn't like about the interview or what Allie could have said better?

Okay, so a recap here. Dallas Jenkins is the creator of The Chosen. Okay. And this was before I started doing my reviews of The Chosen episodes. I had mentioned that Dallas Jenkins was on with Allie Beth.

This might have been the first week that I did this, in fact. And I was disappointed in Allie's interview because I really thought she softballed the whole thing. And this is a gal that I'm used to seeing.

She's way more hard-hitting as an interviewer. There's that Scott Coley guy who, man, she just mopped the floor with. She ate his breakfast. He did not know how to answer any of her questions. He just, all the way through that interview.

I was impressed that he actually stuck with it. I just thought that he would have gotten to a point and would have said, Excused himself. Never mind, bye. But no, later he actually thought he did well with the interview.

It was terrible. She just totally discredited the guy completely. Well, first of all, he comes on and he says that he's, how did he word it? He said, I am theologically conservative but socially progressive.

It's like, that's a double-minded man. You can't be theologically conservative and socially progressive. You're double-minded. So anyway, that was really funny. And I think she even pointed that out.

She was like, how do you do that? But anyway, her questions with him and she does it in her perky personality and with a smile and just totally trashed his worldview. But with Dallas Jenkins, the creator of The Chosen, she was not hard-hitting at all.

In fact, about the most pushback that she gave was with regards to things that he was saying about Mormonism. And even then, I still don't think she pushed it as far as she could have. Dallas was clearly trying to kind of own his answer in a way not to give enough break for her to be able to jump back in and argue with his points.

Like he was quickly trying to shift back to let's just talk about the show. But the interview on her program really just sounded like another plug for The Chosen. There wasn't anything negative said about the show itself.

It was just his relationship with Mormonism and some of the Mormons behind the scenes that have executive produced the show and been president or showrunner behind the show or on the cast or anything like that.

In fact, the location where they filmed this is owned by Mormons. So there's a lot of Mormon influence behind The Chosen. And just not from Ali about that. One of the criticisms that I made is that she should have asked Dallas what is the gospel.

Because as I said, I don't think he knows what it is. And as we've pointed out, going through The Chosen and then through their stuff where they did like the reaction video, watching people watch it and then interviewing them, just by some of that interaction, answers that Jonathan Rumi, who plays Jesus in the show, answers that he's given, we can tell they don't know what the gospel is.

And they think they're sharing it with people. Yeah, definitely.

It's crazy how they're so confused, yet they think that it's correct. Yeah.

Let me play this snippet here from Dallas. So this is an answer that he gave to Ali. And I just kind of want to say here's what I wish that she would have pushed back on with this clip. And you could have assumed questions that she could have asked in any number of places in the interview.

I'm just playing this clip as an example. So here's Dallas Jenkins.

I would say probably 95 of the content of the show isn't directly from Scripture. People call it a Bible show. They'll call it a Jesus show. And I'm OK with that. But I'll say, this is actually, I mean, the Bible is for sure the primary source of truth and inspiration for the show.

But there's a ton of content that isn't actually directly from Scripture. So to your question. Wait, what?

Contradicted himself in almost the same sentence. Exactly.

Yeah. You know, remember when we were reviewing the interaction between Jesus and Nicodemus, I said, of course, what Jesus says is John 3 .16. So you couldn't say the gospel is not there. Right.

But the way they do it is not.

I mean, inflection, all these other kinds of things. That's something that we as human beings are never going to get right. The sinless, holy son of God. We're never going to portray that. Yeah. Accurately.

Right. We can't. It's impossible for us to. Right. When you read in the gospels about how awestruck people were around him. And he is fully man. Right. Right. He's fully God and fully man. He is a man.

He's a human being. Right. And yet there was still something about him that just struck people. Hence, the statement that you have at the end of Matthew 7, at the conclusion of the Sermon on the Mount, that people were amazed because he spoke with authority, unlike all their other teachers, unlike the scribes and the Pharisees.

Right. He didn't teach as they did. He spoke with authority. So even the way that he speaks conveys and communicates something that's unlike the way anyone else teaches. But Jonathan Rumi does not do that.

I'm not listening to Jonathan Rumi going, oh, wow, this must have been what it was like. No. To be in Jesus' presence and to hear him talk. Not at all. I'm not remotely impressed with his performance.

I'm really not. Yeah. I mean, he's a happy Jesus. He's another happy Jesus portrayal. Yeah.

Jesus is love and nothing else. Yeah, right.

It's just love. Which he is.

He is love, but he's also just, and he's also, you know, I mean, like,.

Ah, it drives me crazy. Can you think of a man from Galilee who's a carpenter and works with fishermen and yet speaks like a king? Not at all. I mean, you have to keep those things in mind when you're talking about who Jesus is and what his presence is.

Yes, he's kind. Yes, he's loving. Yes, he cared for widows and orphans and the poor and everything else. Let the little children come to me. Children wanted to be around him. So, yes, of course, he is all of that, but he's God.

Right. How do you portray that? It's not possible. I can't. Which is why when I preach, the focus is on the words. I'm not trying to convey or speak it in such a way that is exactly the way that Jesus said it.

I'm going to try to put the emphasis in the place where the emphasis needs to be. But it's the words that we're focusing on. Lest anybody wants to say that, like, well, isn't, how different is the chosen from your preaching?

Aren't you, you know, you're embellishing on the words that are in the Bible when you preach. I'm trying to draw your attention to the words in the Bible when I preach. The preaching is to put the focus on the text.

Not on the actor. Yeah, not on me. Know what the text says. Here's what this says. Everything that I'm adding to this is commentary just to get you to see the text, to see what, to hear what God is saying through these words.

And it doesn't have to be acted out in order for you to give that. I'm never going to give it, I'm not going to be able to give it the proper inflection. You have to think of the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, as being written like letters.

And pretty much everything after Acts is a letter. Romans to Revelation, even Revelation is a letter. Okay. Because it's to the seven churches. Oh, right. Uh-huh. And the argument could be made that Luke and Acts are letters.

Because Luke is writing to Theophilus, most excellent Theophilus. Oh, yeah. With the gospel and with Acts, so that leaves Matthew, Mark, and John. But you still have to think of them as being written like letters.

It was written for the church to be able to have record of these things that the apostles were proclaiming in the gospel that they shared. So it's like a letter. It's not written to be a play. Uh-huh.

Right. Or a movie script. Right. The emphasis is on the words. When the apostles went out and they shared the gospel, they were proclaiming what Christ said, but they're not acting it out. Uh-huh. And I'm sure that, you know, they would sit around with people and they would tell stories about like, you know, here's what being with Jesus was like.

Uh-huh. Because surely people are asking, what was he like? Yeah. The people who didn't know him or didn't meet him, you know, or whatever else. Surely those questions were there, and the disciples were answering those questions, seen through those eyes.

That's certainly a lot different, and you're getting first-person accounts from those who were actually with Christ. But the gospels aren't a script, so I'm not standing up in the pulpit and trying to recite the line the way that Jesus did.

Uh-huh. I'm trying to tell you what Jesus said, and it's the substance of what he said that your attention needs to be on. Uh-huh. With The Chosen, the attention is, like you said, it's on the actors.

Yeah. It's entertaining. Yeah. Because I can tell you sitting there watching it, I'm even sitting there going, well, that was terrible, you know. That delivery was awful. Yeah. And that's what you're thinking about.

You're not really thinking about exactly the substance of what's being said. Uh-huh. Now, I heard a story just the other day, I think it was just yesterday, of a husband and a wife who were watching The Chosen, and it caused the woman to go and read her Bible, the wife, who was not a Bible reader at the time.

Okay. So she's watching The Chosen, she goes and reads her Bible, and she quit watching The Chosen. I figured. And just kept reading her Bible. Uh-huh. Which, that's awesome. Yes. But that is God working against the show.

Yes. Not with the show. Because she quit watching. Because she quit watching it. Yes. She recognized that what's in the show and what's in my Bible are two different things. This is the word that I trust.

Uh-huh. And praise God for that. I'm so glad to hear that. Oh, amen. Yeah. But that isn't the way that we should consider the show as a tool to try to evangelize people, because I don't think it's really going to do that.

I don't think the creators of the show are doing that. They think they are. This was a 60-second clip. I think we've been through 20 seconds of it.

Okay. It's a dangerous proposition. You know, you're walking a fine line, especially as someone like myself, who loves the Bible, and I know that people who watch it, the majority of people who watch it, are going to be wanting us to remain faithful to the Scriptures as much as possible.

We operate from this question. Is this plausible? Okay, my mistake.

It's only a 30-second clip. Oh, there you go. Yeah, so the question he asked there at the end, is this plausible? Plausible. Not if it's faithful, but is it plausible? So everything that you're getting from the Chosen is just plausible.

Yeah. It's not grounded in truth by his own admission. And all of that was in his words. And like I said a few weeks ago when talking about Dallas, he's a showman. Yeah. So he knows how to sell his product.

He does. I'll give him that. He knows how. And, I mean, the T-shirts that you see, the interviews that you hear him do. If you type in The Chosen or you type in Dallas Jenkins on YouTube, you get a lot of Dallas Jenkins.

He is everywhere. This is not the silent director behind the scenes who just wants to put his art out front and let his art speak for itself. This is Dallas taking full use of the platform that he has available to him.

There is a lot of Dallas Jenkins out there. I've listened to several other interviews that are just, I mean, in every one of them he gives, there's something like this, that you're just like, what? Why doesn't anybody push back on the guy?

Yeah. Why doesn't anybody say that that's a problem?

My question is why did he pick the title Chosen, The Chosen? That just doesn't make sense to me with how they're portraying everything.

Yeah. The concept of the show is supposed to be that you're seeing Jesus through the eyes of the people around him, those who were his chosen. Because as you go through the first season, from episode to episode, he's choosing his disciples, this one first.

And, of course, the first disciple chosen was Mary Magdalene. According to The Chosen, that's his first disciple. Well, that's…. I mean, I'm not even making that up or trying to…. He goes by the Bible, though.

He loves his Bible.

Yeah, right. It's 95%. Does he just carry it around with him closed the whole time? I don't understand.

It's like a Donald Trump statement where Donald was saying, I love the Bible. Yes. It's my favorite book. I have many, many Bibles. Yes. And then he gets asked by an interviewer, well, what's your favorite part of the Bible?

Can you give us one of your favorite verses? No, it's very personal to me, so I don't like going around saying what my favorite verses are. You put it on the guy and he can't answer a question. And Dallas is the same way.

This is an argument that I've made many, many times. A lot of the people that dislike Donald Trump were just like Donald Trump. This was how I knew he was going to be elected president of the United States because he sounds just like the majority of evangelicals that I hear.

I always go to church at Christmas and on Easter. I drink my little cup. I eat my little wafer. The Bible is my favorite book. There's not going to be any better book out there but the Bible. And I have lots of Bibles.

I have them all over my house. That sounds like the average evangelical American, to be quite honest with you. And when I go out and do evangelism and I was encountering those people in the public, that was exactly the kind of answer I got.

If I would ask them, are you a Christian? Are you saved? Oh, yeah. I got lots of Bibles. It's my favorite book. Same answers I got. And Dallas is that quintessential American Christian.

So that's why he's selling everything. Yeah, right. That's why he's selling it, right.

Yeah, easily. So the answer to that question was supposed to be how could Allie have done that interview better?

We just dissected part of it. Sorry.

It's a bad show. Just don't go near the chosen. Don't use it as an evangelical tool. Certainly do not give them money. I think this coming Sunday is the Season 3 finale. Okay. So I've got to get back to doing my reviews.

I haven't even watched the first episode of Season 2 yet. God willing, maybe we'll be back to doing that next week from a studio in our home. That would be awesome. That's the God willing part. That's the God willing part, yeah.

Well, yes, God willing because I've been so busy with everything else that I haven't had the time to do that. So all that busyness, the busy season will be past. For a short while. Yeah. Then we just jump back into busyness again.

Yeah. All right, this next question is about a certain what video regarding what it means to be hot or cold. Okay. And not lukewarm. So let me play the video and then we'll get to the question. All right.

In Revelation 3, Jesus rebuked the church at Laodicea for becoming complacent in their faith. I know your works, he said. You are neither hot nor cold. So because you're lukewarm, I will spit you out of my mouth.

Now, it's often interpreted that being hot is having passion for God and cold is against God. If you have no passion, then you're lukewarm. Therefore, Jesus is saying either be all in or all out. It's the ones in the middle that really make me sick.

But how does that make sense? Jesus was not telling a church I'd have more respect for you if you were just against me. Laodicea was abundant in riches and the church benefited from the wealth of the city.

It got to the point where they thought they didn't need anything from God. But Jesus said, you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. You have nothing apart from Christ. For all of Laodicea's luxuries, there's one resource they didn't have.

Water. Nearby Colossae had refreshing cold water and Hierapolis had medicinal hot water. But what happens when you channel that water in? It becomes lukewarm. If you're expecting a cold drink and it's warm or hot water and it cools with all those mineral deposits in it, you're going to spit it out.

What Jesus was saying to them was this. You are far from the source. You cannot refresh nor offer healing to anyone because you're far from me and my word. Many churches today have sought after wealth and prosperity and they've forgotten the word of Christ.

Jesus says, those whom I love I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent. But if you cling to this world instead of Christ, he will spit your name out of his mouth on judgment day when we understand the text.

When mineral deposits settle all down to the bottom and you get that one gag.

You thought the nickel in your water tasted bad now. Just wait until you get those mineral deposits in the water there. It's so gross. All right, so this is from Zach and he says, I've seen your videos on the Church of Laodicea regarding what it means to be lukewarm, but what does it mean when Christ says, I will spit you out of my mouth?

Not sure if I missed the explanation, but does he mean he will send them to hell or remove the church? Any insight would be much appreciated. Well, let's look at this in context. So we're going to Revelation 3 and remember that I mentioned earlier that Revelation itself is even a letter.

It goes to the churches in Asia Minor and in Revelation 3 .14 we have the last of those seven churches addressed by Christ through the Apostle John. And he's talking to the church at Laodicea, which is right near Heropolis and Colossae, as talked about in the video, and a very, very wealthy city on top of that.

It used to be that Colossae was the wealthy city, hence why it's called Colossae, because it was huge and it was on the major highway, the Roman highway that would go through there. And it used to be the place where all the riches that you find in Laodicea, you used to be able to find in Colossae, like the purple fabric that they would sell, the salve for the eyes, which was medicinal.

That was another thing that Laodicea was known for. It used to be sold in Colossae. But then what ended up happening was the Romans rerouted the road. Right. And it didn't go through Colossae anymore.

It went through Laodicea. So all of that wealth and trade and everything else that Colossae was known for got moved to Laodicea, which became one of the wealthiest cities in the Roman Empire, so much that when there was an earthquake that devastated the city, Rome sent money to them to rebuild, and Laodicea sent it back.

They didn't even need it. Wow. So they sent all that back to Rome. Could have used the money in Colossae. Yeah. But the Colossians were kind of forgotten. It was like a forgotten group of people. And think of that whenever you read the Book of Colossians, because when you hear Paul talking about how included they are in the work of ministry, that meant a lot to them since it was kind of thought of Colossae as being a forgotten city by that point.

Interesting. Even the Roman Empire didn't really care for them. So anyway, so we get to Laodicea here with Jesus addressing Laodicea in Revelation 3, starting in Verse 14. To the angel of the church in Laodicea, right.

Angel of the church is basically speaking as if the spirit of Laodicea, or the spirit of the church, not the Holy Spirit, of course, because the Holy Spirit is with whoever believes in Christ. Right. You have the Holy Spirit.

But I'm talking about spirit like lowercase s. So you think about the spirit of the church, the people that are there. To the angel of the church in Laodicea, right. This is what the amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God says.

I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were cold or hot. Let me stop there for a moment. Remember, this does not mean I wish you were all in or all out. Right. There's that song.

There was a contemporary Christian song from back in the 80s and 90s that was, I don't want to be a casual Christian. I was about to say, I don't want to be a lukewarm Christian. That's not the lyric, not at the beginning.

It's the next part where it says, I don't want to live a lukewarm life. That's what it is. But it just means the whole lukewarmness about this passage just means that you're far from the source. If you were hot, you would be near the source.

If you were cold, you would be near the source, the source being Christ. But because you're lukewarm, you're far from the source. So that's the reference, something that, of course, the Laodiceans would have connected with and understood right away.

So because you are lukewarm, Jesus says in verse 16, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. Because you say, I am rich and I have become wealthy and have need of nothing. And you do not know that you are wretched and pitiable and poor and blind and naked.

I advise you to buy from me gold refined by fire so that you may become rich and white garments so that you may clothe yourself and that the shame of your nakedness will not be manifested. And I salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see.

Because once again, that was a medicine that Laodicea was known for. People would come there to get healing for their eyes. Jesus says in verse 19, those whom I love, I reprove and discipline. Therefore be zealous and repent.

Now here's another verse you're surely familiar with. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. Oh boy. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come into him and will dine with him and he with me.

I've got another video that explains that.

It's taken out of context so often. Often, that's right.

Verse 21. He who overcomes, I will grant to him to sit down with me on my throne. As I also overcame and sat down with my father on his throne. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit, capital S, says to the churches.

Now then, do we get anything from that that would indicate that Jesus would send them to hell? No. Yeah, really we do in the statement, I will spit you out of my mouth. I mean that statement, I will spit you out of my mouth.

I was taking that more as like he's reproving. Surely, yeah.

But if they are lukewarm, I will spit you out of my mouth. And so, verse 19, therefore be zealous and repent. Oh, okay. If they don't repent. Okay, okay. Yeah. So he's so disgusted by their behavior because they're self-dependent.