Welcome to the InTouch podcast with Charles Stanley for Monday, April 27th. God does all the work of pursuing a relationship with us. Tune into today's podcast, Jesus the Seeking Savior, and discover how he reaches out to each of us with love and grace. The most beautiful and masterful piece of artwork ever to be found about Jesus, probably in this passage of scripture that I want to talk about today. Because it shows Jesus standing at this door with his hand raised to knock.
And what it is, it is the message of the Lord Jesus. to the seven churches in Asia Minor. And this particular verse is in that particular series of two chapters, Revelation chapter two and Revelation chapter three, when Jesus is speaking to the seven churches. I want you to listen to this message. It's a very, very important message.
All of them are, but I want you to listen carefully. Because there's A picture of Jesus here that's not found anywhere else in the scripture. And it's so comprehensive. Because it's about our relationship to Him.
So I want us to read these verses together, beginning in this third chapter of Revelation. and uh read uh the 14th through the twentieth verses. Revelation 3, 14 through 20. This is just one of these seven churches. He said to the angel or the messenger or the pastor of the church in Laodicea, write.
Amen. The faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God says this, that is Jesus saying this. And he said to them, I know your deeds. that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were cold or hot.
So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot or cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. That's pretty strong language. Because you say, I am rich and have become wealthy, and have need of nothing. And you do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked. I advise you to buy from me gold refined by the 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 save, to anoint your eyes so that you may see. Those whom I love I reprove and discipline. Therefore be zealous and repent. Here's the verse.
Look at this. Behold Jesus. Behold, I 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 with me.
Here is a beautiful Beautiful, masterful picture of Jesus. And more than likely, you have seen this somewhere along the way because this particular scene was painted by Solomon, and you remember, you've probably seen that picture of Jesus standing at the door, knocking in the light, and so forth.
Well He not only was knocking on the door of those churches, he knocks on the door of every single heart. And so, what I want us to do, I want us to see him in the five different perspectives that he's mentioned here. And the first one is this. Here's what he says. He says, Behold, I stand at the door and knock.
So we see Jesus first of all standing. What does that symbolize? his readiness. That is, he's ready to enter a life that's willing. and ready for him to do it.
He says, Behold, I stand at the door and knock.
Now I want you to notice something here. Who's taking the initiative? It is Jesus who takes the initiative in our salvation experience. And oftentimes we think it's a decision that we make. We are responding to His standing before us, waiting, ready.
I want you to turn, if you will, to Romans chapter 3 to make it a little brief. And here is the human heart the way God sees it. And so, you know, we don't see it this way because we don't like to think of ourselves this way. But as a believer, you're not this way. But this is humanity the way God sees it.
And let's go to the third chapter and look at verse 10. as it is written. There is none righteous. Not even one. That is, not a single person is righteous.
Apart from God. There is none who understands. There is none who seeks for God. All have turned aside. Together they have become useless.
There is none who does good, there is not even one. Then he skip down, he gives some other details, but he says: there is no fear of God before their eyes.
Now that's the way God sees mankind.
So ask yourself the question. If this is true, how could I have decided, or you could have decided on your own, that you were going to be saved and you were going to do better when He says there's none good, there's none righteous, you can't see, you're blinded by sin, and there is none who seeks for God.
So, when you come to this passage of Scripture and you see Jesus standing at the door, listen, He stood at the door of your heart before you got saved. There was a time in your life when you trusted Him as your personal Savior. You were responding. You were a responder to the work of the Holy Spirit, getting your attention, pointing out to you the sins in your life, and pointing out to you the fact that if you died without Christ, you'd be eternally separated from Him. This is Jesus taking the initiative.
And for example In John, this sixth chapter, if you'll notice, for example, in the 44th verse, here's what he says, no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him and I will raise him up on the last day, which is his way of saying. You don't just decide on your own. I'm going to get saved.
Well, I'm not going to get saved now. I'll get saved later. One of these days, as if it's all I. No, the reason you're saved is you responded. To the work of the Holy Spirit, getting your attention, showing you your sinfulness, and bringing you to a saving relationship to Him.
When you come to this third chapter of Revelation, you come to these verses that describe, listen, he says, I know your deeds, that you're neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were cold or hot.
So because you're lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I will spew you out of my mouth. Think about God saying, that lukewarmness Is so unacceptable, it's like spitting something out of his mouth. In other words, and there are many Christians who are lukewarm. They're neither hot nor cold. In other words, you can't depend upon them.
Leave me alone. Just let me live my life the way I want to live it. Don't expect too much from me. And you see, that's what causes nations to lose freedom and liberty. Lukewarmness and indifference.
It's what causes churches, for example, to become loveless, as we saw a few moments ago. Lukewarmness. Don't expect me to get too involved. Don't expect me to tithe. I'll give a little bit, but don't tithe.
Don't expect me to give my testimony. Don't expect me to sing in the choir, preach or teacher. Don't expect me to park cars. In other words, I'm saved, but don't mess with me. I'm saved, that's enough.
He came into this world and died on the cross and shed His blood to save us from ourselves and from sin. And then we want to live the kind of life that just ignores him and just says, well, you know, I want to be a Christian life, but I've drawn this circle. I'm not stepping outside of it. Or, I've drawn this line, don't expect me to get this committed because this is as committed as I'm going to be. He says, I hate that.
Not that he hates the person, but he hates the idea that a person would remain to be lukewarm. Let me ask you a question. What kind of relationship would you have with your husband or your wife if you were just lukewarm? You never got excited. You were just sort of there.
Nobody wants that kind of relationship.
Well, God doesn't want that kind of relationship. He says it's a despicable relationship because He says it's so bad that from His perspective, knowing our capability and knowing who we are and knowing what we can do and what we can accomplish and achieve and knowing what He wants to do for us, He can't even get our attention. Behold, he says, I'm standing at the door and what am I doing? He says, I'm knocking. Notice he says, I'm standing, not sitting.
Not wandering around, behold, I stand at the door and I knock. Let me ask you a question. When is the last time in your life that you ever heard God speaking to you. Remember when that was? You say, well, God doesn't speak to me.
Oh, listen, if he's knocking on your door, he has something to say. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. And so you ask accept the question, well, how does he knock?
Well, sometimes he knocks through circumstances to get your attention. difficulty, hardship, pain, disappointment, all kinds of things that go on in our life. Oftentimes that is God knocking on the door of our heart to get our attention. And if you are an unbeliever, you've never trusted Jesus as your Savior, I can tell you exactly what He's doing. He wants to get your attention because he knows what's coming.
He knows where you are. He knows that you need him desperately.
Now, many people are just exactly like he described here. He says, for example, they have this sense of self-satisfaction, and that is, they will say, you know, I'm rich, I'm wealthy, I have need of nothing. And the truth is, he says, you don't realize that you're blind and wretched. And many people He knocks on the door of their heart and they'll tell you they don't need God. But it's interesting when they go to bed at night, they roll and they toss and they tumble, and what they don't realize is.
That's part of his way of knocking on the door of their heart. He won't let them go to sleep. Why? Because listen to this: Jesus pursues us. That's who he is.
He's not satisfied with their being lost. He's not satisfied with their living a carnal life, a fleshly life, that is half-hearted, lukewarm. And so what does he do? He knocks on the door of our heart with difficulty, hardship, pain, the word of God. all the ways.
For example, Somebody says, Well, you know, I don't like listening to preachers, or I don't like watching preachers on the television. They bother me. I hope so. I hope so. Because listen, it's through that pastor or through that speaker, whether it's a pastor or whoever it might be, what is God doing?
Through them, he's knocking on your heart's door. And the worst thing you can do is what some people do, and that is you turn a deaf ear. He says, for example, in this passage, he said, You don't know that you're wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked, that is, spiritually naked. You don't have it. And when people refuse to listen to the gospel, What they're doing is, they're turning a deaf ear to what he says.
He says, I'm knocking on your heart's door. And what is he knocking for? He wants to get our attention.
Now here's the dangerous thing. I used to live about two blocks from a railroad track. And there were about 12 trains that came through there within every 24 hours. When I first moved there, I thought, oh my, I'm going to have to put up with this. because as a lovely place as it was, I heard that train.
And if I was home all day long, I'd hear about it every couple of hours or so. And so it bothered me for a while. And then people would come to see me and They would say, you hear that train all the time, I'd say. What rain? Because I'd heard it so long.
and turned a deaf ear to it. I didn't even hear it. I'm still knocking. But you don't hear it. Because you see It's not making any contact with you.
When God knocks on the door of your life, He is knocking on the door of your life to get your attention because there's something as a believer he wants to deal with. And listen, God just doesn't... That's not what he's up to. He's up to something very specific in your life. Why can you not sleep?
Why do you have to take something to make you sleep? Have you thought about the fact that it may be God knocking on the door of your heart, that He's troubling you about something that He knows is getting to cause you a lot of trouble? He says, behold, I stand at the door and knock. You see, here's the way Satan blinds people. Oh, that's what the preacher thinks, that's what the teacher says.
That's one of those Christians know. When God wants to deal with you, He may use people that you would not expect. to get your attention and remember He wants your attention for your good. To save you from yourself and to save you from a bad influence and to save you from making decisions that will ultimately destroy you. Because listen, He has things He wants to do in your life and for you and through your life.
And if you die without Christ, here is a life He created. Gifted, talented, skilled, had a will and a purpose and a plan. You live your whole life without Him and you die. Wasn't because He didn't care, wasn't because He didn't try to get in, wasn't because He didn't say anything, it's because you would not listen to the voice of love. awesome, eternal, unending, gracious love.
You turned him down and you paid the penalty. He says, Behold, I stand at the door and knock.
And you see, if there are things in my life that I don't want to give up. Oh. Till finally I don't have to listen. And I think I have escaped. only to have set a trap For my life.
They can absolutely destroy it. He says, Behold, I stand. at the door and I knock. But he's not just knocking because listen to what he says. He says, If anyone hear my voice, Watch this.
If anyone hear my voice, and opens the door. Here's what I'll do.
So I want to ask you again. When is the last time? You know that God spoke to you personally, specifically about something in your life. It may be good or bad. And I've told you this before, but I use this illustration because it fits so perfectly.
A man who really blessed us and gave us one of our billings that didn't touch. When he called me, here's what he said. He said, Yesterday I can get you off my mind. He says, He was probably in his 70s at this point. For the first time in my life, been a Christian since he was a teenager.
For the first time in my life, I know that God spoke to me and told me to call you.
So he wanted to know what was going on because he knew God told him to call me. I'd never seen him before, didn't know anything at all about him. He was so excited, he said, for the first time in my life. He said it about three times.
So he asked me if we had any need, and I told him what the need was. I said, I don't talk about it. We do have a need, we need a building. I know that I found one that we can buy. They want $2,700,000, but I believe I can buy it for $2,000,000.
He said, you think you can do that? I said, yes, I can. He said, I can handle it and send us a check.
Now here's the important thing. And you know what, I can promise you before God, the important thing about this is not the $2 million. When this man said, And I can hardly believe this. If he'd lived all of those years, And for the first time in his life, He knew God told him something.
Now you may say, well, he listened to God and cost him $2 million. I know that's what you were thinking, so I thought I'd get that out of the way. No, that's not the issue. The issue is when I went to see him and had lunch with him. Three times he said, You know?
For the first time in my life, I knew God had spoken to me clearly.
So I'm asking you this. When is the last time in your life? You could say On this occasion, I know that God spoke to me and told me exactly what to do. Can you look back at a time? If you're walking in the Spirit, you could say yes this morning or yesterday or whatever it might be.
He says, Behold, I stand at the door and knock.
He didn't say, if you don't open this door, I'm coming in anyway. Which he could have. He's omnipotent. But here's this awesome gentleness and loving. and respect of Jesus.
Listen, he loves us. even in our sin. He respects us even when we disobey him. What does he respect? He respects us to the point of respecting our freedom, which he gave us, to choose him or to disobey him and reject him.
Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hear my voice, Somebody says, Well, God's never spoken to me, and I say to you, Yes, He has. You thought it was something else. But he has spoken. Would God not speak?
Sure He does. Remember this. He loved you enough to die for you. And if He loved you enough to die for you, He's going to knock at the door of your heart. He's going to speak.
He wants to get in because he knows you desperately need him. And secondly, you will rejoice once he's there. Life will change absolutely completely. And you will be grateful for all eternity that you let him in. Uh Thank you for listening to Jesus, the Seeking Savior.
If you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or InTouch Ministries, stop by intouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.
