Good morning. Wanna welcome those who are online. Can you join me in thanking the worship team for what they do weekend out? I hope they hear it backstage. I, I don’t know what you were doing at six 15, but they were all here. What they do isn’t happen by accident. It took, it took Kurt 16 months to find Myron, and I keep telling him it was worth it. He’s just done a phenomenal job. So we, we appreciate you all. If you’re watching back there years ago before I moved to Houston, I had two churches that invited me out to speak. In the middle of August. I spoke at one church, their morning services in another church. We had an evening thing. Once I moved to Houston, I realized why pastors had guest speakers come to Houston in August, is so they could leave Houston and come to Colorado to vacation in August.

So I was thick in my marathon training days. I had to run just about every day. So I was gonna run in the afternoon between the two services. So it was, I’m sure over a hundred degrees, probably 90% humidity coming from the Seattle area. I’d never experienced that. I go out very naively, didn’t have any water with me. I would never carry water for a six mile run in Seattle. And after about two miles, I realized this is so different. It felt like somebody was blowing a hairdryer directly down my throat. I could barely breathe. About two and a half miles in, I passed a ditch that had a half empty bottle of Coke lying in it. And I almost paused. I’m like, well, it’s wet. No, Gary, that’s too gross, but it’s wet. That’s too, i I can’t slip that far. So I went another mile.

And finally I’m thinking, th this could be life threatening. And so I saw a woman in the front of her yard playing with her kids and she had a hose curled up. And I walked up and I’m so embarrassed, I am dripping wet. These little kids are looking at me like I’m from Mars. And I go to her, look, I’m so sorry I’m not from around here. I I didn’t carry any water. Do you mind if I get a sip from your hose? She couldn’t have been nice. Oh, by all means, help yourself. Well, I’m embarrassed, just kind of intruding on ’em. So I turn on the water faucet immediately, put the hose up to my mouth, who, who knows how long that water had been in that rubbery hose. Who knows how much bacteria was just waiting to get out and have a little party in my stomach later that afternoon.

I knew it was kind of a foolish thing to do, and the thought of coconut ditch would be repugnant. But when you get really, really thirsty, you just don’t care about the consequences. You’re saying, I have this need and it needs to be met. Now we are all needy people. Our physical needs mirror, our spiritual needs and the hardest things. Watching my dad the last year or two of his life, this strong man who had provided for us, who had guided us becoming ever more dependent as every month passed. And, and for me, my natural man thinks that’s the last thing I wanna be, is dependent on anyone. My, my highest value was independence. I’m strong. I don’t need anyone. In fact, if, if somebody wanted to insult me in one of the worst insults they could give is, oh, Gary’s so needy. I mean, I would be appalled at that until God convicted me that that was my pride talking and reminded me that Jesus, our Lord and Savior came as a baby.

Jesus. Our Lord and Savior allowed his diapers to be changed. Jesus had to cry when he was hungry and Mary fed him at her breasts. He was so dependent on her for the basic necessities of life. And even the adult Jesus said in John five 30 by myself, I can do nothing. And it’s one of the life changes for me where I was so transformed by God when I realized I can be independent or I can be like Christ, but I can’t be both. If I wanna be like Jesus, I have to learn how to depend on him because he would later say, apart from me, you can do nothing. Now here’s the glory behind a life of dependence, over a life of independence. When we are dependent on God, we are dependent on the same Holy Spirit that moved Elijah and Elijah and Jesus himself.

And he sends us his spirit for us to do what we could never do on our own and experience what we could never experience on our own. See, I I had to change my view. The problem wasn’t my needs. And the fact that I’m needy, we’re all needy. The problem is where we go to get our needs met. And that’s the message to the church at Leo Deia, the last church in our series, they were so independent they thought they didn’t need anyone. And that eventually included God. And God is calling out to them saying, you’re actually in desperate need and you’re looking to meet your needs in the wrong place. Leo Deia was such an impressive city. They, they were very wealthy. Where they were in the trade routes meant they didn’t have to depend on other financial help. In fact, when earthquake wiped out the cus valley in 60 a d, their nearby neighbors all had to have Roman imperial help rebuild their cities.

Not Leo Delia. They said, we’re good. Thank you very much, Rome. We don’t need your money. We’re wealthy. We can do it on our own. And it warns us at the very start. Here’s the danger we face. It’s possible to be very impressive to the world, to ourselves, to others, to have the veneer of success and be pathetic to our savior revelation. To address, address, to lay de see begins in Revelation chapter three, verse 14. When Jesus says this, Jesus describes this, the faithful and true witness. I wanna underline the word true there. Jesus says, I, I’m faithful. You can trust me. What I’m speaking is true. And he’s doing that because they’re living under an illusion as most of us are. We think we’re doing better than we are. We, we can start to feel independent from God that we don’t need him. But when we admit Jesus’s words that we’re needy, we can be conscious of our needs and then get our needs met in the right place in the healthy place.

So the first thing we learn from Leo Deia is that spiritual health begins. It begins by listening to Jesus who says his words are faithful and true. We have to trust him that we’re living under an illusion. But he knows what he’s talking about. I have seen Christians, I’m old enough to have seen Christians who have shipwrecked their faith because they stop believing that Jesus is faithful and true. Or that the words of his apostles are faithful and true. Why they have desires and they think those desires are needs. And then, well the Bible says, I’m not supposed to meet him that way, but I think that’s the best life. And Jesus say, no, that’s not the best life I’ve come to give you abundant life. And so they choose to deny their God before they’ll deny their felt needs and they shipwreck their faith.

And the laodecians were so independent, they thought of themselves as wealthy. ’cause They had so much money, they thought of themselves as fashionable. The black wool that was grown only in their region was, I mean, people came from all over. It was a status symbol to have your clothes with the Ian Black wool, they thought of themselves as healthy. They had a medical school. They had a special eye powder that could heal eye diseases called the Ian Eye powder. They were independent. We don’t need anybody. We’re all that. And Jesus says, you’re, you’re living under an illusion. Here’s what he says their real estate was in chapter three, verse 17. You’re actually wretched. You’re pitiful. You’re poor, you’re blind and you’re naked. You’re not rich. You are impoverished. You’re not well dressed. You’re spiritually naked. You think you can help others see physically, but spiritually you’re blind. You’re independence isn’t to be celebrated.

It’s to be mourned. It’s that’s your downfall. And so Jesus tells us, and this is a hard lesson for us, it’s true for all believers. We’re not the best judge of our own spiritual condition. We need God’s word. We need God’s spirit to make his word alive. OD de Sea is earthly success, had lulled them to sleep. Everybody knows we’re doing great. They’re like Jamaica, no problem, mom. My parents took us on a Caribbean cruise when my dad retired. You go to all those little Caribbean islands, and I’m sure Jamaica played it up. That’s what tourists want to hear everywhere we want, anywhere you ask. No problem man. No problem. And then we went to Haiti and they knew what we had heard in Jamaica. And it was real kinda funny. One of the tour guys says, yeah, I know you’re just in Jamaica. You kept hearing no problem, man.

Hearing Haiti. We say no solution <laugh>. But Leo Deia was Jamaica, no problem, except for Jesus Disagreed. Jesus said, there’s a big problem. You’re actually making God sick verses 15 through 16, I know your deeds that you’re neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other. So because you are lukewarm, neither cold nor hot, I’m about to spit you outta my mouth. Now this got misinterpreted for a long time. Last 50 years, people kind of get this. He’s not saying he would rather that we’re cold toward God than lukewarm. It refers to od de sea’s situation in the Kus Valley, they literally had no direct access to water. They couldn’t get to their own water. So they had two sources. 10 miles to the east was colos where they could pipe in. Very cool, pure drinking water six miles to the north Le Opolis, which was fame for it, hot for its hot springs.

And it was very healing if you had a pool of the hot springs. The problem is, if you pipe in hot water and you pipe in cold water, it becomes lukewarm. And if you were to drink the water from opis, it’s calcium carbonate deposits would literally make people vomit. So Jesus, you don’t have water that’s cold and refreshing. You don’t have water that’s hot and healing. In fact, you don’t have any water at all. You’re dependent on your neighbors for your water. And if you drink the wrong water from your neighbors, you will become sick. What is a more basic need of life than water? I said, yeah, you’re all that you’re independent. No you’re not. Let your physical dependence on water become a picture of your spiritual dependence on me. Because Leo Deia thought they were independent. Here’s what’s so sad. So they thought they didn’t need God.

And here’s what makes God sick. They were satisfied with less than God. That’s what breaks God’s heart today. When we are satisfied with less than him, spiritual health begins when we recognize our neediness. Paul’s famous statement in Roman 7 24 was this, oh, wretched man that I am. ’cause It’s only when we realize that we’re poor, that we’ll go to God for his riches, that we’re blind, that we’ll seek his revelation that we’re sick, that we’ll seek him as our physician. But I got, I gotta be honest, if you’re not a believer, that is a hangup for a lot of you non-believers. I know that I had a good friend in college. I love the guy. And he wasn’t a Christian. We had a lot of talks about it. Finally, he agreed to go to this Christian concert. It was with John Fisher. He was a folk singer at the time.

I loved his music. And he has a song. He ends it before there’s a evangelistic call where he says, I, I’m not one who’s got it all together. I’m here as a beggar telling you where I found food. I love the song. My friend hated it. He was offended. He said, Gary, I am no beggar. If I come to God, I’m gonna come bring in things You can’t say I need God. And that’s our heart. If we don’t think we’re needy, we’ll despise God’s offer. Isn’t that what the Pharisees did to Jesus? We don’t need your righteousness. We figured out righteousness. We’re good people. We’re moral people. We know the commandments. We can keep them. We have our little list. And our charts we’re actually far more moral than anybody around us, except in Jesus’ eyes is no, you’re you’re dirty sles. He goes, you’re, you’re, you’re not holy. Now, others of us, we don’t pretend we’re living moral lives. We’re kind of ashamed of the lives we’re living. But instead of turning to God to get those needs met, we we drink that half empty bottle of Coke in the ditch instead of turning to God. We just try to look everywhere else.

How many people today chase self-destructive sins, not realizing they’re just knocking on the wrong door. They’re not. They don’t realize what their need is for God. They keep smoking and drinking and sharing their bodies and putting themselves in danger, wearing themselves out to make more money, not realizing that they’re knocking on the wrong door, that it’s never gonna satisfy. If they would just stop. If we would just stop and listen and stop knocking on the wrong door, we might hear God knocking on our door. And that’s what’s gonna happen to Leo Desia. But first God’s remedy for them. You think you’re all that. But here’s what he says in chapter three, verse 18. This is really the message from the sermon. Buy from me. You are in need. And I’m the only place where that need could be met. And he explains, I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, not your banker’s gold that’s filled with all of these impurities.

This is pure gold so that you can become rich and white clothes to wear so you can cover your shameful nakedness everywhere they thought they were strong. Jesus is saying they’re rich. Yeah, you’re the fashion capital with that black wool. Well here, wear your white clothes. We talked about white last week. Sad to put on your eyes so you can see, yeah, people come from all over your world to get their eyes healed, but you are spiritually blind. He’s trying to get them to see how much they need him. And so he says in verse 19, be earnest and repent. These are words of passionate love. He says, I want better for you than what you’re settling for. It’s because God loves us. It’s because God wants the best for us. That it makes him sick, that it makes him wanna spew us out of his mouth.

When we settle for less than him. We, we see this somewhere. I I remember running track in high school and I loved it. I’m just not naturally gifted. And I worked as hard as I could, but the ceiling was limited just from my lack of natural ability. And there was a guy on our team, he dripped natural ability. He was so good. It was amazing the natural talent he had, but he wouldn’t work at it. And he lived a lifestyle that wasn’t conducive to fast track times. And it would make me and our teammates sick knowing what he could be. It made the coaches sick. Do you realize what you could do? Do you realize where you could go? Do you realize what you could accomplish that we can’t? And it makes you sick when you realize somebody has that and they don’t. And this is Jesus pleading with Leo Deia and pleading with us. I see what you can be. Do you have any idea what you can do? Do you know the satisfaction and the joy and the love you can experience if you’ll buy from me instead of pretending you don’t need me and then going to other places?

Can I just say, if what you are doing makes God sick, it’s not healthy because God’s vision for you is better than your vision for you. Do you believe that Jesus is faithful and true? Do you believe that’s true? If how you are living and what you care about makes God want to vomit you out of his mouth, your success and even your happiness are delusional. Running from God can feel happy for a while, but you’re living in a delusion. You don’t realize first what you’re missing and where the road you’re running on will end. And Jesus, who is faithful and true is saying, I don’t want that for you. I want the best for you. But, but here’s what’s so amazing that this is the wonder of the God that we worship. It would be so easy. And I think as, as humans, we would likely just if, if somebody rejects us, we just wanna send them away.

Jesus responds to the worst church who’s rejecting him, who says they don’t need him with the warmest invitation. Look at verse 20, here I am. I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person. And they with me. He’s not trying to condemn him. He’s not here to condemn you today. He’s inviting you. Will you just let me in now? People, we just don’t respond that way. When people reject us, man, it makes us bitter. It makes us angry. The last girlfriend I broke up with before I started dating Lisa, who I eventually married, it didn’t go well. My best friend had told me he was praying that we would break up A spiritual mentor said, Gary, you need to do that. I didn’t like to hurt people. And so were they sitting there in my 1974 Ford Maverick grabber, still miss that car.

And she’s sitting over here and I finally said, look, I think the world of you, but in the end, I, I just don’t think we’re a good fit. And I saw an anger in her. I had never seen the year we were audacious. Fine, well, you just go find yourself someone who’s a good fit. And I can still hear her slamming the door and stomping off toward her dorm. And I thought, man, I really didn’t want it to end that way. But when we feel rejected, that’s how we respond. Maybe a better example. Any of you ever watch American Idol and how the worst singers are the most surprised when they get rejected? The worst someone is, the more surprised they are when they’re told they’re terrible. How do they respond every season? Oh yeah, you all are gonna be buying tickets to my concert someday to hear me sing.

And we’re all saying, no honey. No. Nobody’s gonna buy a ticket to hear you sing. We might pay you to stop singing, but we’re not buying a ticket to hear you sing. That’s the human response. It’s not God’s fine. You’ve rejected me. You’ve worn yourself out looking everywhere else. Buy from me. Oh, I’m knocking on the door. Open it up. I’ll come in and I’ll eat with you. And here’s what’s so amazing. This is so key. He doesn’t promise them things. He says, open the door and I’ll eat with you. He promises them relationship. He’s not tempting him with what he’ll give them. Like with me, he might say, Gary, open the door. I’ve got the taste of Texas, my favorite restaurant in the world, perfectly cooked steaks. My wife, he’d have to say something different. Hey, Lisa, open the door. I’ve got a Mediterranean kale salad with with dressing that has no seed oils, right?

This, this is perfect for you. He doesn’t tempt us with things because it’s the pursuit of other things that has ruined us. He offers himself open the door, I will come in. I will eat with you when Jesus knocks. Will you open the door? See you’re needy. Can we just admit that you’re either seeking those needs to be met in God or you’re seeking ’em to be met somewhere else by definition that somewhere else or someone else is less than God? It’s why I know we have young women in this church that let their boyfriends treat them so poorly. Well, he treats me a little less poorly than my previous one. Maybe he’ll get better. That’s why some tire yourselves out trying to earn more money, not realizing when you get really successful, the government’s gonna take half of it anyway. Some of you are throwing away your integrity to succeed in your vocation because you’re more concerned about your vocation than you are.

Whether you’re making God sick. Many of us are suffocating our marriages and our families and our children because we want them to fulfill us. I learned long ago when I stop letting God fulfill me, when I stop finding my needs met in God, I become demanding of my marriage. I become demanding of my kids instead of being able to give to them. Ultimately, this was life changing for me. This has not come naturally outta me. I realized I will be a much better person when I accept I am needy, right? I, I am. I just have to shop in the right place. And that is going to God. Who here today, you broke your skis. Let’s say yesterday are gonna go to King So’s grocery store and say, Hey, I need to buy a new pair of skis. We don’t sell skis. What do you mean you’re a store?

Call the manager. I’m here. I need skis. Or who will go to Eddie Bauer and say, by the way, I need a gallon of milk. We don’t sell milk. We sell outdoor clothing. I need milk. You’re a store. Gimme milk. I mean, if you made a scene, everybody would think, what is wrong with that person? That that they’re crazy. And yet how many of us go to our family or to substances or romantic relationships and say, I need this from you. And they can’t give it. And God is there saying, buy from me. So how is Jesus knocking at your door? Is it through your failures? You have tried and tried and tried and your heart’s been broken and this isn’t working out and you think you gotta just try harder? Can you pause and hear Jesus saying, buy from me. Open the door. Maybe you’ve succeeded more than you ever thought you would and realize, yeah, that didn’t do it for me either.

And so you think you gotta get another success and another success. And God is saying, buy from me. That’s not gonna do it for you. Is he speaking through your emptiness? You think that you can finally experience enough pleasure to make you forget about your pain? And eventually you’re gonna realize no pause. Listen to Jesus knocking and hearing God say, buy from me. Look, those of us who have, those of us who have opened the door will say with the Psalms from 1 0 7, let them give thanks to the Lord for his unfail love. Everybody’s gonna let you down. God won’t. He satisfies the thirsty. I don’t want that half bottle of Coke in the ditch. He fills the hungry with good things. Now, our most basic hunger, our most basic thirst is to be spiritually right with God. That’s at the beginning. And I think it would just be a crime.

‘Cause You can come here week after week and not really know. How do I know that I’m right with the Lord? So every now and then, we wanna make it clear that anybody who knows they need to get connected with God knows what the Bible says and how to do that. And it begins with our neediness to admit like my friend wouldn’t, that we are all beggars. Scripture is very clear. Romans 3 23 all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God in case there’s any doubt. Verse 10, there is no one righteous, no not one that puts us in a perilous, needy spot because Romans 6 23 tells us for the wages of sin is death. You’ll feel that death if you’ll slow down death of your peace, the death of assurance, the death of your joy. You could keep trying to run ahead of it, but if you just slow down, you’ll know your sin is bringing death.

But that’s not the last word. Because the gift of God that we can’t earn is eternal life in Christ Jesus, our Lord. Not in our successes, not in our own morality. Not that we might be a little bit better than our neighbor. Our only hope is in Jesus Christ. And so Jesus met our desperate need on the cross. Romans five, eight, God demonstrates his own love toward us while we were still sinners. Christ died for us. I hope you come to the Good Friday service. I find even Christians don’t understand why was the cross necessary? There are those that are calling the cross an obscene truth. It is a glorious truth. And in a very short message, we’re gonna talk about the power behind it. Well, how do we connect? Okay, if this is my need and this is God’s provision, how do I connect with this provision?

Romans 10, nine. If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, the Lord Jesus, and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you will be saved. You’re saying, Jesus, take my sins and I’ll take your hand. I’ll let you be. I’ll follow you as my Lord. Well, is it that simple? It it really is. Next verse, Romans 10 13, whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. If you don’t know where you’re at with the Lord, this is your basic need. We’re gonna give you a chance to respond to that. But while God works on your heart, I wanna give a visual picture of the desperate state of our neediness that we truly do need. God. Rick Hoyt was born with the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck, cut off the oxygen supplies he was being born.

So he had severe cerebral palsy. In fact, the doctors told his parents, he’s just gonna kind of be like a vegetable. I, I think he just put him in an institution. Dick said, no, this is my son. And he took him home and he, he saw his son interacting with him. Dick is a huge Boston Bruins fan. So he’d watch games together. He just knew something was in there. So when Rick got older, he took him to Tufts University and he pleaded with the professors, look, can you please invent a way for my son to communicate with us? The professor examined him and he came out to Dick. He said, look, I don’t wanna offend you, but I don’t know that there’s that much to interact with. You say, oh yeah, tell him a joke. So the doctor said this corny joke, and Rick laughed.

The doctor was intrigued. And so they rigged up a system where with his eyes, Rick could look at a letter, it would light up, he could point it. And somehow they taught him how to type out messages doing that. And the first message Rick typed out was Go Bruins, which thrilled his dad. All of those times they were sharing the games together. He just knew it. Well, Rick came home from school one time, a classmate had a medical emergency and they were raising funds. So they organized a 5K. And Rick said, I wanna run in that 5K to raise money. Well, that meant Dick would have to push him. Dick said, I’m the ultimate couch potato. I couldn’t run around the block, much less do a 5K. But his son said, I really want to do it. So he did. Second to last thought he was gonna die.

Said, I’m, I’m glad I’m done with that until Rick typed out when they got back. Running that race with you is the only time I’ve never felt disabled. Well, that’s all Rick needed to hear or Dick needed to hear. They started doing five Ks and 10 Ks. And then, believe it or not, marathons, they did 30 over 30 Boston marathons. I got to see him in 2011 on, on one of ’em. And then Rick came up with that. I’d really like to do a triathlon, which if you don’t know it an Ironman triathlon, and this was the one that was in Hawaii, is swim 2.4 miles, bike 112 and run 26.2 miles in one day. Now, that’s more exercise than most of us get in a week. And for Rick to do that, it meant Dick had to pull him, carry him and push him. But here’s what Dick decided to do. Watch this video.

Me, when I’m, they, I the

Precious,

I am not crying. You’re crying. Did you see not just the joy but the ecstasy on Rick’s face. He’s not disabled. His dad’s, he couldn’t do a 40 yard dash on his own. His dad had to pull him, had to carry him, had to push him. And Jesus is saying, open up the door. This is what I will do for you. You can’t live this life on your own. I don’t want you to live with this life on your own. You’ll settle for less. Let me pull you, let me carry you. Let me push you to the end. Have you given Jesus that opportunity? Will you open up the door? I’d like everybody to close their head eyes and bow their heads. Please. If you don’t know where you’re at with Jesus and you’re saying, this is me, I I want to know. I just want you to raise your hand, Lord. I’m ready to let you be my Savior. I’m ready to let you be. Lord, raise it up high so we can see it.

Balcony.

If you’re online, just type in, I’m, my arm is raised. Let’s pray. Pray with me. If this is your desire, father, I know my need now. It’s clear. I I can’t make it on my own. I, I I can’t be righteous enough. I can’t find my fulfillment apart from you. And I recognize that Jesus is faithful and true and he’s not rejecting me. He’s inviting me. And so, Lord, I am opening the door. I give you my sins, and I take your hand to be my Lord and Savior. And I wanna walk with you the rest of my life. Thank you that you died for me a sinner. Lord, let me now receive your eternal life that I could spend eternity with you and walk this life with you. In Jesus’ name, amen.