Church of Laodicea

Yeah, it's like a little wood, and then Snyder comes right out of the middle. Yeah, they live in the corner of Snyder and whatever's out back there.

Yeah. She bought a house a couple years ago back there. Would, uh, Mr. Berry, would you, uh, open us up in a word of prayer?

Heavenly Father, Lord, we're thankful you can come to be with fellow saints this morning to study your word,

Lord, and to be, uh, instructed from your word. I pray that you would, uh, bless Brother Mike with the wisdom to expound your word and to expound this revelation to us.

Um, be with him, guide his word, Jesus to my prayer. Amen. Open your

Bibles to Revelation chapter 3. Looks like we're a little light this morning.

There's a, the funk is going around. Yeah. I got sick family.

Morning. Revelation chapter 3, verse 14.

This will be the letter to the church of Laodicea. To the angel of the church of Laodicea write,

The Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God, says this,

I know your deeds, that you are neither hot nor cold. I wish that you were cold or hot.

So because you are lukewarm and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.

Because you say I am rich and have become wealthy and have no need of anything.

And you do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, naked.

And 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 revealed.

And I salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see. Those whom I love

I reprove and discipline. Therefore be zealous and repent. Behold, I stand at the door and knock.

If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come into him and will dine with him. And 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. And he who has an ear, let him hear what the

Spirit says to the churches. So I guess we get to probably the most infamous church in all of the seven churches.

Most of us have heard who growing up in church, you've probably heard we are living in the

Laodicea age. And how untrue that is because you can look out all over the city and at some point, one of these churches is evident in either the way that it's acting or the way that it has followed false teaching.

Some even being persecuted all over the world. Some even to the point of death as in Pergamos.

But in this case, Laodicea has a very stern warning.

And before we get to the actual letter itself, obviously we've got to find out some historical things about Laodicea.

Does anybody remember who the city was named after? When we went through Daniel?

Anybody remember however long ago that was? Nine months ago now? Well the name would give it away.

Laodicea was Antiochus II's wife. He named this city after her.

And at the beginning of the last vision given to Daniel, he says they're going to be the king of the north coming against the king of the south and all that.

And Antiochus II is actually one that is brought up as being one of the king of the south coming against the king of the north.

Antiochus II was given Bernice which was one of the

Ptolemy dynasty's wife. And those two collided because he was already married, if y 'all remember, to Laodicea.

And then they had the conflict. He got the younger, hotter wife from the Egyptian Pharaoh. And she didn't like it.

Eventually there was a coup. They killed him. But he still named the city after her before he died. So that's where Laodicea, and that was probably somewhere between 253

BC and 241. Because I think he died in 241. And that would have been Theos Antiochus, or Antiochus II.

Then, not only did you have Laodicea being started by the

Seleucid Empire, but it became a very, very, very well -known city within Asia Minor, become very wealthy.

Laodicea became, in Asia Minor, became basically the banking center of Asia Minor.

As we go through each one of these things that Jesus rebukes them of in here, each one of them has a specific thing that pertains to that city.

So, as we look at Laodicea being a, we'll just write them down.

He'll say they're rich. They were a banking center.

An empire for only Asia Minor. He says other things about them.

He'll say that they got fancy clothes.

Why would he say they had fancy clothes? Y 'all are clothed, but you're naked. In Laodicea, they had a very, very rare black wool, produced, obviously, by black sheep.

And it was very rare. So, if you wanted fine black wool, Laodicea was the place to go.

It was very, very, very rare, because it was not dyed. He also talks about them being blind.

So, they have, bring about, you think you can see, but you can't.

Laodicea also became a salve capital.

They produced some salve for the eyes, went all over the

Roman Empire. They were the ophthalmologists of the ancient world.

So, as we go through these, he's going to say you need to buy salve so you can see. Well, what did they think they were?

We'll get to all of this. So, that place was very rich. It had a very, very rare and expensive clothing there, which would have been the black wool.

And they had the eye salve that was supposed to cure anything.

If you had an eyeball problem, I'm blind in this eye, I could go over there and, supposedly,

I'd see. So, that would be the place to go. They didn't have glasses back then, but they had other things that they could do.

But all that being said, being rich and having nice clothes, being the eye -fixing capital, there was a, many of you may know this, they had a huge problem, though.

In that city, you had four gates. Everybody would come in from four different sides, north, south, east, and west, and they would come in.

And the only thing, the major issue was their water supply.

They did not have their own drinking water source. They had water, but it was not drinkable.

It would make you sick. And so what they had to do was get their water from somewhere else.

So, they had hot springs that came in from Hierapolis, cold springs that came in from Colossae.

Each one of them, respectively, one being nine miles away and the other one being five or six.

And they had aqueducts that brought the water into the city so that they had drinking water.

So, the water that was there would make you constantly sick. So, if you went there and you're like, hey, there's a nice little pool of water there.

It's cool. I'm going to reach down there and take me a little scoop of it. It doesn't look dirty. And you were to drink it, you'd make a throw up.

It is actually called emitic. The water was emitic. That's a fancy word for barf.

Actually, the word, when we get to it, it says spit. I think the

King James says spew. Who's got the King James? Does it say spew in the King James? No. It does? Does anybody else say anything other than spit or spews?

Anybody say vomit? Yours says vomit. What do you have? New King James. That's actually the correct word because the

Greek word is emeo, and it means to vomit. We're not talking about a little hiccup here.

We're talking projectile. I had to ask my dad this. I remember as a young child

I ate some stuff that I wasn't supposed to. I just asked him yesterday.

I said, hey, I remember when we went to the emergency room, they said something about pumping my stomach out, and you asked them not to do that.

He said, yes, and what did they give me? He said they gave you epitac. I said, well, what?

He said it was an emitic. I was like, oh, okay. That's where emitic comes from.

It's from the Greek word to vomit, and I remember when they gave that to me. It was not long.

It was projectile for hours until whatever was in my gut got out.

I like to eat, but I ate some stuff that I probably shouldn't have, and it was going to make me very ill. That's what they gave me.

Epitac. Some of y 'all older folk may have had that in your medicine cabinet.

I don't think people have medicine cabinets anymore, do they? Epitac. No? What did you do if somebody needed to barf?

Just shove your hand down their throat? Here, stick your finger. Yeah, we tried that. It didn't work, so Dad took me to the hospital and said you've got to get what's in his gut out.

So that was the situation with the water. Hey, so now when you hear about you're neither hot nor cold, that begins to make more sense about what he's going to say to the

Church of Laodicea because he's not saying, well, don't look too far ahead of me.

So this was the issues, actually the great things about it, and then here was the only problem with the city itself was the emetic water that was there to barf.

So let's start walking through it, and we'll see how far we get.

He says to the angel of the Church of Laodicea write. Now, Laodicea, is this the first letter to the

Church of Laodicea? Isn't there a reference in one of the epistles that there was a letter that got sent to Laodicea?

There was, that's correct. So, if we, actually, why don't we do that.

Turn over to Colossians, I think it's in Chapter 2.

It's actually 2 and 4, but we'll start at Chapter 2. Colossians 2, and this is

Paul writing, and this is his letter to the Church in Colossae.

See, right here. He says, for I want you to know how great a struggle

I have on your behalf, and for those who are in Laodicea, and for all those who have not personally seen my face,

So, here it is, Paul's writing a letter to the

Colossians, and he's also saying he wants it to be on whose behalf? The Church in Laodicea.

So, there was obviously a connection between this church, this church, and Laodicea.

Now, we know that Paul, his ministry, and for that time that he was in Ephesus, for that three years, he said that, or two and a half to three years, that all of Asia Minor heard the gospel.

So, we know that each one of these seven churches was planted, ultimately, by the preaching of Paul.

But, what did Paul just say about the Church of Laodicea? They had never seen his face.

So, we do know this, that Paul may have been to all these other churches. We know he was in Ephesus. He may have made his rounds to those other churches, but we know this, he never made it to Laodicea, because that's what it says.

Now, look at what he says, though. He has a great struggle, not only for Colossae, but for Laodicea.

What was Paul's struggle with the churches? Not only did he say, he said,

Hey, I struggle and pray not only for the problems that are within the church. Remember, these churches always had issues up front, but he says those are also the struggles that are coming and the temptations that are coming outside the church.

I have heard this, I can't tell you how many times, and those of you that have been teaching Bible a long time will say this as well.

I've heard a lot, man, it would have been great to live in the first century church. No. No way.

Would I like to go in a time machine and go back and see how they were doing things? Yeah, but I wouldn't want to live there. They didn't have the full canon that we have.

They were trying to work through some of these struggles that we now know have been handled.

We've got something we can look in Scripture. Look what Paul has written in its complete form, along with the other epistles, the other apostles, and we can see the issues and we can pull the principle or the direct command from that.

They didn't have that. How long do you think sometimes it took to get from a letter from over here to over here?

It wasn't an email or a text message. It may be a little while. And on top of that, we don't have to worry about Roman soldiers coming in and hauling us away.

We don't have to worry about the Jewish insurgents coming in and butchering us because we have followed a crucified insurrectionist named

Jesus Christo. That's true, though. It's true. Turn over probably just a page to chapter 4.

Let's see if I can find where it says it. He says here towards the end, he says,

Greet the brethren who are in Laodicea. Once again, here it is, Laodicea.

And he also says earlier in the book that he wants them when this letter is read, maybe the book of Colossians is read,

I want you to read the letter also that is coming from Laodicea. Okay?

So, Paul wrote a letter to Laodicea.

Now, there is some differences of opinion on what that letter was. He's not in here, is he?

I think when he was going through Colossians, he believed that letter was probably the book of Ephesians.

And there are many scholars that believe that. That it could very well have been the letter of Ephesians.

I don't hold that position. I believe it was really a letter to Laodicea. The reason being is because I'm not sure that Ephesians was written at the time.

I think Colossians might have been written before based on Onesimus. And I can't get into all that, the way Onesimus and Tychicus and all that, and how they were going.

I think it was Colossians may have been written earlier. And so the question is, was the letter of Laodicea authoritative and apostolic?

I asked you that question. Was it authoritative and apostolic when he sent the letter to be read to Laodicea?

Yes. Yeah. What Paul wrote was apostolic. And what he wrote was authoritative.

Now, once you come to that conclusion, then you say, okay, was that letter from Paul to the church of Laodicea, was it

Scripture? That's right. Probably Scripture.

I mean, if we didn't retain it, if it wasn't... Then it's not

Scripture. Scripture is what God has compiled. I understand what you're saying. You have to make a distinction between a letter that's apostolic and authoritative to something that's

Scripture. How many letters do we know actually went to the church of Corinth?

Two. We only have two. Who said it? Three. Four.

Four. Yeah, four. All right. How many of them are Scripture? Two. Two.

Why? Because God said so. There you go. Because God said so.

Now, it doesn't make it any less authoritative at the time, but it was not

Scripture. Now, it would be awesome to have that rebuking letter that Paul sent to Corinth.

I mean, what does he even say? He said, look, I didn't mean to offend you. Well, wait a minute. Yeah, I did.

I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. Yeah, you know what? I meant to. It made me feel bad for a minute because I was so hard on you, but actually

I'm glad I was hard on you because it produced what I needed to do. My opinion to the letter that we don't have to Corinth is if we did have that, that would give pastors and ministers the authority to be a chainsaw to a blade of grass.

And that's wrong. That's sinful. That would then say, well, Paul acted this way. Why can't we?

Here's the example. Why can't we? I am thankful that we don't have it, although it would be awesome if we did because I'd like to know what he said.

But that would then show that it would give men the example of either lording over or being heavy -handed.

In this case, with the one that went to Laodicea, we don't know what was in that letter. We know this, whatever that letter was, it was important enough that he says when you read the letter from Colossians, read this one as well.

And it was important. So we do know that the church of Laodicea, back to Revelation, they actually had apostolic writing.

We look at some of these other churches and we go, man, they never. Let's take the last church we did.

Did they get any apostolic writings that we know of? No, we don't.

But man, you know who they did get a letter from? Jesus. Think about the

Smyrna. Look at all the writings that went to Smyrna.

Not only did they get ones from Ignatius and Polycarp, those church fathers, they had those.

And you had the Ephesians. How many letters did the Ephesians get? They had Paul. They had

John. They had stuff that went to Timothy when he was there. But when we get to here, the church of Laodicea had one from Paul, which we do not have, and then they had this stern rebuke from Jesus.

He says here, the amen. The amen. Has Jesus addressed himself anywhere in Scripture yet as the amen?

You want to give me any reasons why he may say he's the amen?

Amen means truth. Truth, yes. True. I mean, I mean. Barely, barely.

True. He is the amen. In the Ephesians it says that all the blessings in God are in Christ Jesus because he is the amen.

The amen. They're all truthful. Everything about Christ is truthful.

And then he goes on to say the faithful and true witness. We heard that already back in the first of the book where he began to talk about he was the faithful and true witness.

Anybody remember, I think it was the church of Pergamum, who was also called the faithful and true witness?

It was Antipas. And Antipas was murdered for his faith in Christ. So we have the faithful and true witness, which ultimately begins with the

Lord Jesus Christ, who is the yes and amen of God, and he is the beginning of the creation of God.

What does the beginning of the creation of God sound like? Let's just be honest.

Yeah. Yeah, let's just be honest. It sounds like, okay, God said in the beginning let there be

Jesus. Okay? That's not the case. Although the arch heretic Arius in the 4th century certainly believed that.

The Arian controversy, which led to, for those of you who have been in a church history class and been in the academy, which led to the

Council of Nicaea, was he believed that Jesus was a created being.

He said there was a time when Jesus was not. And there are people that thought, yes, sir?

Just to say the ESV says the beginning of God's creation. Yeah.

And that's basically saying the same thing. And if you go to Colossians, I think it says the firstborn from all creation.

Actually, in the beginning of the book, it talks about that. And that actually leads to the question of then what is

Jesus saying about himself here? He's the one that says he's the beginning of the creation of God.

I believe it's two things. One, in the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God.

The Word was God. All things were created by the Word. Right? We agree with that. It was created by Jesus Christ.

He was the executor of God's decree. But he's also the beginning of God's creation as being the firstborn from the dead.

Firstborn from the dead. Was Jesus Christ the first one to ever be resurrected? No. We got two in the

Old Testament. There's a funny one in the Old Testament. I just thought about it. You remember, I think it was

Elijah lays on top of the boy. You want to talk about it? Yeah. Oh, yeah. That one, too. He lays on top of the boy, and then he sneezes seven times, and then he's alive.

It's like, why do you need to sneeze? But that's how the Scripture records it. He laid on top. He breathed on him.

He got up. Kid gets up. I'm like,

I had to read that again. I'm like, did he really say he sneezed seven times? It does. He sneezed seven times. Then you have others, like you said, where they said, hey, when

I die, I want you to put me in the tomb with the man of God, with Elijah's bones.

Rolling him over, hits Elijah's bone. Boing! Dude's alive again. Yeah. Then you have the widow of Zarephath, her son.

Lazarus. Lazarus. Yeah, Lazarus. But what happened to all those people?

They eventually died again. Lazarus. I always chuckle about Lazarus, because imagine his family coming around.

He's dying, and they're all sad. Don't worry about it. I've done this before.

Don't worry. I've done this before. I've died before, so this is going to happen again. You ever think about what

Lazarus was thinking when he heard Jesus' voice? Can I stay here?

It's nicer on this side. But we don't know. So that's how we should understand when it says that Jesus is the beginning of the creation of God.

One, he certainly is the firstborn from the dead, meaning he was resurrected.

He is flesh and bone today. Look, there is something in heaven today that wasn't there before Christ was incarnate.

There is a human being beside the throne of God. Flesh and bone.

And then it says, I know your deeds. We've heard that six times.

Remember, I know your deeds. If we just stopped at that comma, that's neutral.

We don't know what he's fixing to say. He just says, hey, I have intimate knowledge of what you have done, what you're doing, what your plans are, your heart motives, your thoughts, your desires, and the things you want to do.

He says that you are neither cold nor hot. Now, he says you're neither cold nor hot.

When you have cold water, what is the purpose of cold water?

What's that? Cool down. Sure, cool down. What else? Drink. Refreshing.

Yeah. They didn't have ice back then, but they did. Sprang ankles and hit heads.

So what did they do? They put cold water cloths on stuff to keep swelling down. So you have cold water for a refreshing medicinal purpose.

But then he also says you're not hot either. What did hot springs have the purpose of doing?

Healing. Healing, yeah. Yeah, I mean, we could just go through a list of things that cold water could do and hot water.

Hey, man, you imagine a cold, if they could have what we drink today to reach inside a refrigerator and pull out 37 degree water.

Man, that was unheard of then. You know, springs were probably in the 70s maybe, which is good.

Anybody here jump in a 68 to 70 degree spring before? That'll make you take your breath away.

You think they say people can't walk on water? Jump into Tutney Springs and watch somebody try.

Boing! They hop right back out. Cold. Yeah, it was cold. Me and some friends took

Jake and his best friend. This has been probably six years ago.

We took him down to Defuniac Springs. And you can see all the way down in the bottom, you can see where it's coming up.

Well, he was going to be smarty pants and hop in. I was like, hey, man, it's cold.

It's cold. I want to go down. Okay, all right. Dude, he jumped in there. He couldn't get out of the water fast enough.

His old lips was turning blue. I said, you might want to go sit in the sun over there and kind of warm up.

It was cold. I wasn't getting in it. It was 60, I think it was 65 degrees. That's cold.

That's cold. So he says, you're neither hot nor cold.

Hot nor cold. You're not, you have no good purpose. You don't have a medicinal purpose for cleansing or healing or soothing, nor do you have anything refreshing about you.

And here comes the famous words. But because you're neither hot nor cold, you're lukewarm.

Neither hot nor cold. Lukewarm, tepid. What is tepid water useful for?

If there's some water out there in that gutter, is anybody going to drink it? No. If there's water out there in the gutter and you want to wash your cup off, are you going to go out there and wash your cup off in it?

No. Why? Because tepid water breeds what? Well, here we can say mosquitoes, like overnight.

Yeah, germs. Yes. He said, because you're neither hot nor cold,

I'm going to vomit you out of my mouth. Look, this isn't

Mike Collier saying this about you. This isn't Andy Montora.

This isn't Keith Foskey. This isn't any of us saying this about you. This is the Son of the Living God talking about these people, saying

I'm fixing to expel you out of my mouth. And he doesn't mean just. In the

Septuagint, the same word meo is used when

God's done with Jonah and he has been swimming in the belly of the big fish, and God says, vomit him up onto the shore.

And that's exactly what God does with the fish. He spits out Jonah. That's what

Jonah looked like when he came out of the gut of that joker. And then walked the three days. I said, and then walked the three days.

Yeah, I don't even know if he walked for three, because it said it was a three -day journey. That's what they said it was, but he was likely there overnight.

That joker's probably running trying to get the seaweed off his head. I bet he smelled good. He probably did. Yeah, he probably smelled like a big old fish burp.

You're just chilling on the shore, and all of a sudden, a dude comes out of a well. Yeah, you're sitting there fishing or pulling a seine.

So, here it is. The Son of God says, I'm going to vomit you out of my mouth. Now, this is utter rejection by the

Son of God. This is utter rejection. This is

Jesus saying, you're absolutely worthless. Worthless.

You've got all these things. You're the banking center of Asia Minor. You've got the finest clothes.

You've got the best ISAF that the Roman Empire can buy. And you have cold water.

You've been innovative. You've made aqueducts that bring the water in from Hierapolis for hot water.

You've got the aqueducts that bring them in from Colossae. And you know what? You're still absolutely useless to me, and I'm going to vomit you out of my mouth.

And here he says why he's going to. He doesn't just say it. He says exactly why he's going to.

He says, because you say, I'm rich. This is what they're saying about themselves. They're saying,

I am rich. What can we say about Laodicea? That was the wealthiest city of Asia Minor.

Hey, Hierapolis, Colossae, they were wealthy, well -going, growing cities.

But they were not Laodicea. You know, if you want to talk about the tri -city combo, they were paled in comparison to what was going on in Laodicea.

He says, you say that I'm rich. Were they rich from human standards? Yes. Think about that church.

That church, much like Ephesus, very wealthy, very affluent, would lay

Laodicea for the purpose of doing ministry, being wealthy. Did you think they lacked any funds?

Let's just be honest. No, they're rich. They're rich. And I would imagine, from their perspective, they were giving money to that church to do ministry, and they thought that what they were doing was well.

One, because you can see right here from their self -deceit. You're saying you're rich.

The Son of God's saying you're not. Look, He's saying, I'm going to vomit you out because you're saying you're rich.

If you're saying you're rich and Jesus is about to barf you out, what is it that Jesus is saying about you?

You're lying. You're lying about yourself. And what's the biggest problem with being self -deceived?

You don't know it. You don't know it. He said, you say that you're rich.

And He says, and I have become wealthy. You see what they have just said about themselves?

They said the same thing Nebuchadnezzar said when he walked on the top of his palace. He walked around the top of his palace.

And what did Nebuchadnezzar say? Look what I've done. Hey, God had already warned him through a vision, through a dream.

This is what's going to happen. And then it said in one year's time. He's walking on the top of this.

Oh, basically the world is my oyster. Look what I have done. Look what I have grown. Look at all the things that I have done.

Look at the kingdoms I have conquered. Look at all of the money that I have provided for myself.

And it was at that moment that God humbled him. This is what they are saying about themselves. I have become.

What did you ever say? Did you ever say I have become wealthy? Or did you say just have become? Um, 17?

He says have become or I have become wealthy. Yeah. It's saying

I have done this. Not saying that God has done this. Certainly, who had given them the wealth and the initiative to do the things at that church in Laodicea in its beginning?

Certainly, God did. Who gave them the money? I mean, what does any man have that he has not received from God?

Anything? No. And I have need of nothing.

And I would even go so far to say the church of Laodicea from every human standard, were they lacking anything?

No. No. If you've got all the money you need, are you going to lack food?

No. Are you going to lack drink? No. For some reason, the water gets shut off.

You can get some wine, okay? You can buy it by the vats then. They had all the clothing that they needed.

He says here, And you do not have, and you have need of nothing, and you do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, and blind, and naked.

So everything that they thought about themselves, Jesus flips the script. Okay, you thought you were rich.

Well, you're pretty broke from my standard. What does a man profit if he gained the whole world and lose his soul?

Nothing. And it doesn't matter if you live to be 150 years old and you die without Christ and you had everything in those 150 years that you wanted.

Anything your heart's desire. That's a blip on the screen. It's not even a granule compared to eternity.

He said you're a wretched. What is a, I don't know, how many of y 'all call each other wretched?

Cindy called me wretched. Did she say you're a miserable wretch?

I just want you to know in my house. In my house, that's my term of endearment.

Come here, you wretched sucker. Okay, miserable, I'm coming. Well, I won't ask that again.

He says, and you're miserable. What does it mean to be miserable? Did they think they were in misery?

No. They thought they were on top of the world. And by every human standard, even from,

I would even say from a church growth standard, if you would have looked on them, the three B's were live and in effect.

And what were the three B's? Booties?

Oh, we can use booties. I said butts. Building bucks and butts.

Yeah. Hey, they had it. They had it all. If you were going to be a missionary, and you needed money to get to some other country outside of Asia Minor, who was going to be the church you were going to go try to get cash from?

It would have been right here. Because they had plenty of it. They had plenty of it.

And then he says, you're poor. Once again, you think you're rich, but you're not. And he says you're blind.

What is it about being blind? Why does he say they're blind?

I mean, come on, man. We have the ISAF capital there. Because they have all this, and they can't even see that they're poor.

And they can't see that all that God had given them, they're not using it for his purposes, and therefore, blech.

Go ahead. You were saying something? No, I was just saying, it's completely, um, but it's, they're the

ISAF capital of the world, so they produce, you know, they're the top producers of medicine for the eye, yet they're blind to their own condition.

Yeah, here it is. You can fix the physical eye, but you can't even see into the eye. You can't even use your eye to see into your own heart to see that what you're doing is not doing what

I have asked of you. Jesus has asked, what's that? Go ahead. I was just going to say, regeneration produces eyes to see and ears to hear.

It does. And I agree with that, but can't we, at times in our life, be blinded by whether life, things that come into our life, whether it be sin, whether it just be life gets tough, whether it's grief, whether it's changing of jobs.

Hey, we are, we easily have our minds turned to other things, and it is a conscious act of the will, empowered by the spirit, to keep ourselves on track, to keep ourselves focused on this.

And I'm going to be honest. If anybody says that's easy, they obviously are not living the

Christian walk. The Christian walk is not easy. I remember when

I told my dad, I did not tell my dad when I immediately got saved. I did not.

I didn't want them to think this was fake. I knew in my heart of hearts it was not fake, but this was real.

And when I finally told him, he said, well, son, I'm glad you like to fight, because welcome to the fight of your life.

And that has stayed with me for almost 23 years. This has been the fight of my life.

But thanks be to God that I'm not doing it on my own. Every day is not white -knuckling it, you know?

The days that I feel like I've got to white -knuckle it, but I can then go, okay, I lean not on my own understanding, but all my ways acknowledge him, and he will direct my path.

God, I can't see what you're doing right now, but I'm trusting in you. That's what he is doing.

Well, in this case, they were so blind that they couldn't even see that one, that Jesus was standing here talking to them, and even when he knocks at the door, they don't even know he's outside.

That's how blind, I wouldn't even say they're deaf. But he says, you're poor, you're blind, and naked.

Does anybody here call them miserable and wretched? Anybody get called naked at home?

They're naked. He's saying, look, you're not clothed.

What you think you're clothed with is not what you need. What you think that you have on is sufficient.

It is not. And we've got to go.

We will pick up there at verse 18 next week. I didn't realize we're one minute over.

So next week we'll pick up at verse 18. I'm going to try to finish next week. I'm going to try. I said last week it was going to be three.

I'm going to try to finish next week because we need to get to heaven. Heaven's in four and five.

Man, I'm just trying to get to heaven. So if we can try to do that. Keith, will you close us out? Yes, sir.

Father of mercies, I thank you for this opportunity to walk through your Word and to hear it taught and to know,

Lord, that it's not just Mike who's teaching, but, Lord, by your Spirit, through your Word, you're teaching us, and we're thankful.

And we do thank you for Brother Mike and his devotion to study and preparing so that he might lead us in this time.

And I pray a blessing upon him. I pray for those who are out today who are sick as many of us are today.

And I pray, Lord, that you would give healing and strength to those who are not feeling well.

Lord, as we do recognize our wretchedness before you, we recognize also the work of Christ who came and gives us

His righteousness, not as a reward for our being good, but as a gift because He loves us.

So help us to hold fast to His righteousness today. In Christ's name, amen. I had a problem with you.

I don't know what it is. No, that's a simple thing there. I saw you over here doing this. I was like, whoa.

This is me, Mark. I just don't know what's causing the dilemma.