Comfortable | Part 1

Revelation 3:14-22 | Part 1 | Have you gotten comfortable where you're at? Maybe you've lost your fire for God. What's stopping you from being all in? Let's push past comfort zones to find the answer. Dive into the letter to the church of Laodicea to wrap up our series.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Jesus' invite to take up a cross and follow him that can never be a routine. It's just this daily challenge, this daily stretching of our faith. Like the path of Jesus Christ is this constant stretch.

SPEAKER_01 0:18

You're listening to The Bridge with Junior Ziggler. Junior's the lead teaching pastor at the bridge in Chicagoland. And Junior, we are opening at the final letter of Revelation. Jesus' words to the church in Laodicea, Revelation 3. This is a big one. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:33

Well I always get nervous, and I'm about to talk about it in the message, but this is my first sermon I ever taught when I was 14 years old. And we'll leave it for the message. But I and you'll see why. I get a little nervous when we hit Revelation chapter three. But what we're about to see, though, is Jesus says, You're not hot and you're not cold. You're just lukewarm. I'm gonna spit you out of my mouth.

SPEAKER_01 0:54

It kind of reminds me, have you ever done like one of those cold plunges? Yeah, my wife and I went to a little trip in Italy. We went to a Roman bathhouse. Oh nice. And they had all these different pools. And there was this one pool that was like half hot and half cold. It was like a lat pool. And so you'd walk in the hot and then you'd immediately walk into the cold. And it felt so refreshing. They both did somehow.

SPEAKER_00 1:14

Yeah well and and I've been in one of those too. It's like the cold is refreshing, and then you get to the warm and it's soothing. And then the cold is refreshing. It actually is really I guess really good for your heart or something like that. But the cold is refreshing, the warm is soothing. And this is what Jesus is getting to with the church in Laodicea is like you're not refreshing and you're not soothing. You're just comfortable.

SPEAKER_01 1:35

That's right. Well today we're gonna see Jesus confronting comfortable faith and he's gonna call his church out of spiritual cruise control. Wherever you are buckle up thanks for joining us.

SPEAKER_00 1:45

Now here's Junior this text it floods me with with memories it started on a Wednesday evening. I was 14 years old and I walked into the basement of the church that I grew up at. It was the youth room was down there. There's about 20 of us in the youth group and that night there was a big announcement to our youth group they said in six weeks we're gonna meet with 50 other youth groups for a competition. Only this competition isn't anything cool like you know basketball tournament or anything like that. Leave it to like 90s youth groups to do this kind of stuff. The competition was where youth groups would get together and they would compete doing things like singing and Bible quizzing and preaching and puppets. And so they put signups on the wall now I'm a pastor's kid so like you know I got you know I got to sign up and I had to decide what I was going to compete in. It's like I'm not gonna sing, nobody wants that. I'm not gonna like do Bible quizzing I'm terrible I'm a terrible test taker and I'm I'm a bit slow. Puppets really freaked me out so I'm not gonna do that. All that was left was preaching. I figured what I've got a dad who can do that. He can probably help me out and so I just put my name up there to preach. Well over the course of those six weeks I wrote a sermon on today's text in Revelation chapter three about Laodicea. I wrote it all out prepared it I practiced it the big day came put my tie on fact I have a picture from this day put my tie on like a good preacher boy. I know I'm looking really spiffy got the khakis and the white shirt and the hair slick to the side got nothing on this drove from Wisconsin down to Hobart, Indiana to meet with the other youth groups and I got my preaching slot. It was at the end of the day. So I watched my friends all do their competitions a few of my friends sang a few of my friends did like the Bible quizzing a few of my friends did their puppets and a few of my friends did some preaching and then at the end of the day it was my turn I walked up into the front of the room my friends were in the back we have the judges sitting at tables right in front of me with their grading sheets ready to grade me. My knees were shaking I was trying to make my voice not shake and I preached my very first sermon on Revelation chapter three. It felt pretty good. At the end of the event all the youth groups were gathered into the main auditorium so the winners could all be announced and trophies given out and I watched my friends get their medals for singing and their trophies for Bible quizzing and their trophies for preaching. My name was never called instead I got an envelope with papers from the judges that graded me and I got the lowest score at the event. I got last place that's right Bridge you're really scraping the bottom of the barrel with me today you might have some extra heavenly rewards just for putting up with me all these years. So bear with me as I said when I was 14 years old please turn in your Bibles to Revelation chapter three. Hopefully none of you brought some grading sheets page 1030 in the Bible chairs if you're grabbing one of those. We've been in the series called Seven looking at seven different churches it all started when the apostle John, which would be Jesus's really Jesus' best friends one of the disciples John at about 900 years old was on the island of Patmos after being exiled and Jesus showed up to him and said I want you to write seven letters to the seven churches that you oversee. And so Jesus dictated these words to John wrote them down and sent them to the churches and we've been studying those different letters now today we end up with the last letter we're finishing it up. Well as the lens of scripture zooms into Revelation chapter three welcome to Laodicea the very last city the very last letter this is a destination city for its high class spas and sought after eye salve, quality black wool a tag with made in Laodicea meant it was luxurious. It's a city that is situated in a valley on one side as we saw in the video on one side of Laodicea was a mountain with hot springs, these warm mineral mineral water many spas were built around this mineral water so people could come and just sit in these hot, these hot springs. On the other side of the city there was that mountain with the cold cool springs great for drinking and through aqueducts and piping engineers routed the cold spring to also flow into Laodicea thinking hey we could have the best of both worlds. We could have both hot water and we could have cold water but there was a problem by the time the hot waters reached the city it had cooled by the time the cool waters had reached the city it had warmed it warmed up and so people would say hey Laodicea is a great place to visit just don't drink the water in town and today somewhere in the midst of Laodicea a group opens up a letter that's addressed to them written from their pastor's boss John but dictated from Jesus himself and they read these words somewhere in town says and to the angel angel meaning we we believe that to be pastor to the pastor of the church in Laodicea right. Does ever feel like as we're reading scripture especially these seven letters ever feel like you're we're reading somebody else's mail? I mean because we are technically I think about in my office I have this hundred year old postcard sitting in my office that a friend had found and gave me and they gave it to me because this is the building that Nicole and I we had our wedding reception it's the union up in Madison, Wisconsin Nicole and I would would date around the union all the time and we had a reception there and so I keep this postcard in my office just for the picture. But if you were to flip the picture around on the back you'd find that there's a letter from one girl to another from like a hundred years ago. And I figure like both the girl who wrote this letter and the the girl who received this letter both are long gone. It's kind of fun to read but at the same time it's like I don't really care because like I don't know them and they're both dead and I don't mean to be insensitive but like that's just you know somebody else's mail and they're long gone. And we can kind of feel that way when we read when we read this letter it's like we don't we don't know the the people that this letter is to uh to the angel or to the ungulos the messenger we don't know the pastor who's the pastor well we really don't know for sure tradition has it that the pastor's a a guy by the name of Epaphras that and that that name might ring a bell to some of us because in Colossians and in Philemon Paul the apostle Paul talks about a buddy of his named Epaphras and tradition has it that Apaphras started the church in Laodicea and he reported then to John and to Paul. And though Ephrus had this reputation of being this go-getter kind of guy, the church did not have this reputation because Jesus continues on he says the words of the Amen, the faithful and the true witness the beginning of God's creation. Now throughout the seven series with each letter what we've seen is Jesus introduces himself differently to each church depending on what that church needs to hear. So Jesus shows different credentials to each church and these credentials are telling. So what does it mean? Jesus calls himself the amen. What does that mean to be the amen? I mean we hear about amen all the time maybe you've been in church before and you've heard somebody yell like amen or you know at the end of prayer we'll say like in Jesus' name amen or maybe you grew up really traditional in a really traditional church and people sing like Amen. Very like churchy, very religious, but what does amen actually mean? Well amen literally translated means complete it, so be it or I agree. So technically when we end a collective prayer we would all say amen. Not as a signal like oh this is the end of the prayer but we're all saying amen because we're saying hey we're all in on this we we we believe this so be it complete it please essentially what Jesus is saying here in this context though is he's he's showing the church's credentials he's saying hey I'm coming to correct you because he's going to correct them he says and I can correct you because I started this thing I'm the beginning of creation I'm also completing this thing because I am the amen. This is my thing and has been since the beginning. And these are the credentials that Jesus is showing because as we'll see this is the only church that doesn't get a commendation there's like no hey attaboy hey I see the good you're doing Jesus doesn't do that he just goes right to it because look at next next verse he says I know your works you're neither cold nor hot would that you were either cold or hot I've heard um I've heard preachers read this verse and and many people read this verse and conclude you know based on what Jesus is saying here Jesus wants you either hot on fire for Jesus or cold, cool kind of distant from Jesus lukewarm is the worst. So either you have to be totally in for Jesus or you have to be just like totally against Jesus. That's what Jesus is saying. That's not what Jesus is saying. Partly because that doesn't make sense. This is where historical and location context really matters. Remember where they live they're in Laodicea and Jesus loves to use in these seven letters he loves to use their location to make a point. So he's saying you live in a city that's near hot water, cold water hot water for soothing and healing cold water for refreshing and drinking the hot water is useful for spas. The cold water is useful for parching your thirst your city though has neither just like you as a church essentially you're just kind of comfortably useless. You're lukewarm now if he were writing to us today he might use coffee as an example. I wish you were a hot cup of coffee to warm a body up on a brisk morning or I wish you were an ice cup of coffee to cool a body down but you're lukewarm coffee and nobody likes lukewarm coffee. And if you do we're gonna have prayer counselors up here after the service to pray for you because that's just wild.

SPEAKER_01 11:11

You're listening to the bridge with Junior Ziggler. We'll get back to Junior in a moment. We want to tell you about one of his books, The Manual if you're a man or raising a man, married to a man, maybe dating a man, there's a lot of confusion around what real manhood actually is in the manual junior cuts through the noise both the over the top macho stuff and the politically correct definitions and he gets to the raw core of manhood. He exposes the toxic masculinity for what it really is. Not manhood at all this book is simple but honest and powerful and it might just change how you view men's strength and leadership. We'd love to send you a copy of the manual just visit juniorziglar.com and give a gift of any amount towards this show and we'll send it to you. That's junior Z Ig L E R. Now let's get back to Junior's message.

SPEAKER_00 12:02

So Jesus continues on he says so because you are lukewarm neither hot nor cold I'm gonna spit you out of my mouth pretty wild imagery. It reminds me of this summer so I was up at our our camp and I I had to run to Menards probably because I just love menards and I love to walk around menards and so it's in menards and my family's actually waiting in the parking lot because I was just doing a quick trip in there and I saw this display of jerky and the advertisement was only three ingredients. Now when I saw it I was like I I like that because I've been trying to eat less ingredients and it was also bison bison jerky I love bison I mean I love I eat bison all the time so like now it's jerky and there's apples in there I love apples. So I got all excited I was like this stuff is like made for me I grabbed some bison apple jerky you know Nicole and the kids are waiting out the cars I bought my jerky I hopped in the hopped in the car tossed a few in my mouth first bite thought like something's not right with this jerky. Second bite like nope this is dog treats. Now and Nicole says it's obvious but if you look at that rapper it's not all that obvious now Nicole is driving I have I'm in the passenger seat with my head out the window like a dog spitting half the two dog treats out on Main Street gagging and ever since anytime my girls feed the dog they'll be like Dad do you want to eat too and I I tell them it's like after the 20th time girls is not funny. But they disagree. And so does our mom. So this is this is really though the image that Jesus is saying he's saying you're lukewarm your your apathetic posture it's making me sick and I won't accept it. Now I don't know about you but it's here in this text that I would love details. Because for me this is frightening I like my comfort am I guilty of the same so I I look at this and I ask myself like what were they doing that made them lukewarm can you give us some details here Jesus were they not serving were they not sacrificially giving were they not reaching out to their community don't know Jesus doesn't give a detail why I believe because through the Holy Spirit they knew exactly what Jesus was referring to they knew exactly where they were lukewarm they knew where they were overly comfortable where they were not stretched. We have that same Holy Spirit in us we do too so right now I think deserves a timeout to just kind of sit in this and let me just ask you is your walk with Jesus simply a routine at this point now? Oh at first it wasn't at first it was like everything was new kind of stretching learning things growing but over the years for those of you maybe been following Jesus for a while it's just kind of become this routine. And to be fair it's in our nature to make things into routine I think of like when Nicole and I brought babies home our goal was to establish a routine sleeping routines and eating routines and we would train our kids to adopt the family routine. I think a lot of families do that weird backward thing where it's like we're gonna adjust to the baby's routine it's like that's a baby. You make the baby adjust to your routine so you have this routine and you have the baby adopt your you know you train the baby to adopt your routine that's good and that's healthy to have those routines. At your job there's power in having your routines isn't there you have meetings at this time and office work at this time you catch up on email at this time it's in our nature to take things and establish routines so that it's not chaotic. And that that can be very great. But what's happening in Laodicea and likely in us is they made their walk with Jesus which was stretching them at a time but they made it into a routine. So now it's like there's no more stretching there's no more growth there's no more pushing we've we've made this into a routine. And that might be this natural thing for us but may we never forget there's a supernatural element to walking with Jesus Christ. Jesus' invite to take up a cross and follow him that can never be a routine. It's just this daily challenge, this daily stretching of our faith this daily push to grow, to sacrifice, to risk, to forgive radically, to intentionally humble ourselves, to openly confess our shortcomings, to serve sacrificially like the path of Jesus Christ is this constant stretch. But in our comfort it's really easy at some point to just kind of sit back and go, let's just run the same comfortable play over and over and over and over until Jesus gets back. And Jesus starts off this letter by saying nah I started this thing I'm gonna finish this thing we're pushing to the end. There's no cruise control in the life that I've called you to live. We're not living these predictable small little lives God is in you. We're living big where are you at when it comes to that has your spirit become lukewarm and I think that's too big of a concept to just kind of skip right past. And so let's sit in this just let's take this a level deeper a few symptoms of a of lukewarm spirit first off is this spiritual apathy in marriage counseling apathy is one of the most concerning attitudes you know you have two people trying to make a marriage work and if there's a passionate disagreement between the couple that can often be worked through. If there's a crisis in the marriage that can often be worked through but if one or both are just kind of apathetic just really don't care about making things work don't really care about living up to their their vows well that then there's just not much to work within same is true spiritually I believe and you can disagree with me but I believe that it's often easier to turn someone who's militantly against God. Like people who just hated God who now serve him faithfully we have a few in our church I think it's easier to turn somebody who's militantly against God I think it's easier to turn them than someone who's just kind of spiritually apathetic. Like meh you know I'm here I'm good you know good enough is that you when's the last time your heart broke for your neighbors when's the last time your heart broke for your coworkers when's the last time your heart broke thinking man how many people are on their way to hell when's the last time that bothered you when's the last time your heart absolutely broke over your sin enough to drag it to the light and address it? Have you just kind of grown numb to your own sin? Have you grown numb to the reality of hell? Have you grown numb to the work that God is up to right now it's far more serious than we often think. Another symptom of lukewarm is just comfort and I think this is Jesus' point here with Laodicea is they're just very comfortable. And Jesus is saying your comfort is a slow death you've been comfortable for years. There's no challenge there's no confession you're rarely stretched and your spirit is atrophied look at you it's atrophied spirit you're lukewarm you ever hear of something called the anterior midsingulate cortex I know for a guy who eats dog treats I sound pretty smart right now. I just heard about this and it's fascinating the anterior midsingulate cortex that let's call it the AMC for short. The AMC, everybody has an AMC it's part of your brain that grows the more you embrace discomfort and challenge. So the more you do things you don't want to do the more your AMC in your brain grows. So for example a study was done last year of of on diets and people who followed through on this like diet challenge, their AMC in their brain grew. Now those who like quit the challenge just kind of went back to doing what they were doing before, their AMC in their brain actually shrunk. So pushing through discomfort grows your AMC now here's what's fascinating the the bigger your AMC the better you age. This is why there's a and we've talked about this in the series already but this is why there's a sharp health decline immediately after retirement. We retire, we tend to get comfortable we tend to coast, very little push, we rarely ever do things we don't like, we're just kind of relaxing. And our AMC shrinks and we decline mentally and physically so a lot of people today believe you know like hey to stay sharp as you age let's do Sudoku let's do Wordle let's do all that there I guess there can be some benefits to that for sure but studies have found that if you actually like doing Sudoku, if you like doing Wordle, it's really not doing much. It's definitely not growing your your AMC. You have to push through things you don't like doing and that actually helps you age better. I love how God designed us God designed us to not be comfortable. One of my favorite quotes is by a guy named uh Victor Victor Frankl. He's uh at 37 he was a Jew who at 37 had walked into a Nazi concentration camp and just lived through the horrors of of watching extermination happen firsthand survived the concentration camp and he later penned these words he wrote what a what man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and the struggling for some goal that's worthy of him. And we're seeing this reality play out today. Our society's never been so comfortable yet so aimless and depressed and empty and we, especially men, call me sexist, I don't care men and women too, sure, but like just especially men we're just not built for comfort. We were built for striving and a struggle for a worthy cause. It's built inside of us it's designed by God. And Jesus says I gave you that worthy cause I gave you my ministry. Hell is real. Get off the couch into the fight how can you sit back when we're being hurled toward eternity you're listening to the bridge with Junior Ziggler.

SPEAKER_01 21:25

That was part one of Junior's sermon comfortable part of our seven letter series this letter to Laodicea. And Junior you're talking a lot during the sermon about routines and you're not saying necessarily that routines are bad. No routines are good for upkeep.

SPEAKER_00 21:39

I mean to keep a habit to keep a good habit you gotta have a routine this is what I do at this time and I think there's a lot of health to that routine bad when they become part or not just even part when they become the relationship. I mean you think about like you and your wife or think about my wife and I if our whole relationship is just routine it's pretty boring. Part of the relationship Between my wife and our Yeah, there there's some routine for sure. We gotta we're raising some girls in our home and we gotta keep the house up and and keep with the schedule. So there's routines that are part of our relationship, but a good part of our relationship is also date nights and getting out and having some adventure and keeping things fun.

SPEAKER_01 22:17

And so when it comes to the spiritual life, how do you think people just keep a routine with Jesus that doesn't go anywhere else? What do you think, Jordan? Don't you think it's pretty easy to just kind of look like a Christian? Yeah. Totally. I think in our culture it's really easy to look like a good Christian. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:33

Because you can just do the routines. Hey, you know, as long as I'm in church, and it's good, you should definitely be in church. This is a routine that you should absolutely have. But hey, as long as I'm in church, you know, serve here and there, you know, give here and there. Like I'm pretty good. It's like, well, that's a routine-based relationship. Instead, when's the last time? And really ask yourself this. When's the last time you thought, man, I really need you, God, for this? I'm stepping out here to serve here. I'm not comfortable serving here. I'm stepping out to give this, I'm not comfortable giving that. Stepping outside the routine to keep that relationship new and exciting and fun.

SPEAKER_01 23:07

And that's where the fun is to our faith. When you actually step out and you're like, God, I want to see you do something new. I want to see you use me in a new and a different way.

SPEAKER_00 23:13

Well, that's what keeps us fresh. I mean, it's just like the cold water. You get into that cold water and that little lap pool and you're refreshed. And you get into the warm water and you're soothing. Breaking out of those routines keeps us refreshing, keeps us soothing.

SPEAKER_01 23:26

So, what would you say to someone right now, Junior, who's listening and they've just hit uh rut? They're just stuck. Yeah. They're stuck going through the motions and the routine. What would you tell them? Are you really following God's conviction?

SPEAKER_00 23:36

Because God calls you outside of your comfort. Yes, of course, the routines are part of our spiritual walk sometimes. But where has God been calling you out to say, hey, no more? Press into this more. Step out here more. I'm gonna meet you there, and this will be a refreshing adventure.

SPEAKER_01 23:51

Man, so good, so convicting. Always good to be with you, Junior. Can't wait for the next time. Well, you have been listening to The Bridge with Junior Ziggler, a listener-supported broadcast. Junior is the lead teaching pastor at the bridge in Chicagoland, and we're so glad that you joined us today. As we told you earlier, we would love to send you a copy of Junior's book, The Manual. Whether you're a man, you're raising a man, married to a man, dating a man, this book cuts through the noise and gets to the raw core of manhood itself. All you have to do is jump on Junior's website, juniorziggler.com, and give a gift of any amount towards this show, and we'll send it right to you. While you're there, you'll also find great resources like today's message, all of Junior's books and podcasts, plus a link to our church, The Bridge. If you're in the Chicagoland area, we'd love to see you at one of our services. Again, that's juniorziglar.com, junior z-i e-g l-com. Thanks for listening. See you next time. The bridge with Junior Ziggler is a production of the Bridge Community Church, a multicampus church in Chicago.