Jesus is their friend, but He now wants to become their lover. He commands them to choose to be zealous, or hot (like the healing waters of Hierapolis), and to have their life defined by repentance—but with this reference to being zealous and its overtones to the healing waters of Hierapolis, He is hinting at His purpose for standing at the door and knocking. He desires their deep inner healing. Yahweh has taken His position at the door, and He has always been there. Yahweh Shammah is there and has never taken His eyes or His attention off them or us. He has been waiting for the right time to knock. But He now knocks. Now is the time. Starting in life, the doors to our soul are open, but as we experience pain and trauma (wounds) from our family, friends, loved ones, and from the world at large, we start to shut those doors determined to protect ourselves to ensure that we will never be hurt that way again by those who should have protected, cared for, and loved us. Jesus loves us too much to leave us in that condition. Therefore, He hangs out in the corridor of our soul watching and waiting, and when the time is right to deal with the troubles in a specific room, He goes to that door, and He knocks. His goal is to secure our willingness to open the door so He can establish relationship, fellowship, and healing in every room that we have shut tight. Download Transcript

To find healing from their sick condition, Jesus instructs them to buy from Him gold having been refined in the fire. If we are willing, the Father will use the fire of sufferings to teach us obedience and to perfect us in Him, just as He did with Jesus. God’s goal is to have His nature fill and inhabit our bodies, hence, He has to remove all that is in the way of His occupancy. There is all necessary to learn why we should put off the old nature and how to put on the new nature. And Yahweh is not targeting our sinful behavior, as that is just a fruit of what we believe and what we feel and think. He is targeting the sin of wrong belief and the unbelief which is buried down in the deep recesses our soul, as these “enemies” keep us from betting our lives on Yahweh. He wants us to buy from Him white garments and be covered only with His righteousness, discarding the self-sufficiency of our flesh. All our own coverings are woefully insufficient, nothing but filthy rags. And He wants us to buy from Him eye salve, so we can see the truth and by the power of the Holy Spirit break through our bias and personal delusion of self-sufficiency. This will allow us to begin to see from the heavenly perspective—as He sees all in and around our lives. Download Transcript

The Church at Laodicea P1. Overall Theme: Let Me In Those in Laodicea are NOT hiding behind their religious deeds, they are not comingling their faith with demonic idolatry, they are not lusting after the riches of religion, and they are not manipulating others with spirituality to control and dominate them. They have not fallen into the apostasies of Cain, Balaam, or Korah. As such, Jesus takes a markedly different approach because they are apostasy free, and not given to other lovers (spiritually speaking). They are misinformed, misguided, and lost, but they are not using His name as a platform for their instinctual religious wisdom. Because God hates religion, but is in love with the wayward son, Jesus talks to them like a faithful friend, a true witness to their spiritual condition and to the remedy they need. They are deluded to their true condition and have embraced the lie of self-sufficiency. And He is going to show them the extent of their true neediness and that He is their only Provider and Protector. Download Transcript

Jesus now comes quickly, so he wants us to hold fast to what we now have. In our endurance, Jesus promises to come and protect over the choice we have made to live as a Chosen one, a bondservant of Jesus Christ. We must be alert for there are those who are actively hunting believers, who want to steal their crown. The secret however to enduring and holding on to the crown of victory is to enter through the open door and seek and find provision from the Father. He promises, “If you make Yahweh your refuge, if you make the Most High your shelter, no evil will conquer you.” He promises those who persevere that He will make them stable like an unmovable pillar that when the shaking occurs, they will remain. And they will be marked with a name implies ownership, belonging, and permanence. But we need to be those who stop going in-and-out of the temple of God seeking what we want (in effect, denying His name), but instead choose to remain safely protected in our proper place with Him: steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord. Download Transcript

Jesus said that there were those who say they believe but are of a synagogue of Satan. This entire concept of those who are not now of God but are of a synagogue of Satan is consistent with what we studied in the Prelude in 1 John 5:19, “We know that we are now of God, and that the whole world now chooses to lie in the power of the evil one.” It is quite binary and a bit shocking. There is no middle ground. One is either a son of God or they choose to now lie in the power of the evil one, and their father is the devil. Hence, they worship in a synagogue or a church of Satan. Jesus will humiliate those who belong to the synagogue of Satan, even though they drape themselves in the clothing, appearance, and authority of God. They have chosen to now be liars and to misrepresent Yahweh. Because of this fact, God is always big on our need to endure—to now be believing in His name, regardless of what He must take us through. With endurance is how those in Philadelphia lived. They lived with the purpose of enduring and persevering through all things. And as a result, He will keep them from the hour of testing. Download Transcript

The Church at Philadelphia: Overall Theme: Hold on & Seek Refuge It is possible for a person, a people group, a church, to even now be believing or abiding in Christ. All that we have learned about the Design Point, the Substitution Principle, and how the source matters, the source is everything, can practically be lived out. Jesus assures them that because His very nature is holy, Yahweh Mekoddishkem (Yahweh who sanctifies, makes holy, or sets apart) has set them apart for Himself. Thus, even though they suffer intense persecution, they can hold on to the one who is true (the one who will not lie nor deceive them). They can endure all things knowing that Yahweh is in control and that He is circumcising them from all attachments to this world, so they will never be identified as those who are now dwelling on earth. Jesus confirms that He is the only way a person can have access to the Father. He opens the door, and He shuts the door. Yet, He has opened and will keep open the door for them to come before the Father any time they want. As He said: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one chooses to now come to the Father but through me.” With little strength drawing on His provision, they have kept His word of perseverance and not denied His name. They have lived what they say they believe and bet their lives on who He says He is and who He says we are to Him. Download Transcript

The Thessalonian church is an example of those who will be rescued from the wrath to come. Their faith is described as a work of faith and labor of agape love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ in the presence of our God and Father. Therefore, Jesus chooses to now deliver them from the wrath to come as He is justifying and reconciling those who let Him, those who choose to let Him be their I AM. Wrath is not an appointment God has set aside for those He has called into His household, rather, it is a decision, a choice they make for judgment. A few, a ridiculously small number, in Sardis walked by faith trusting in God’s righteousness and God’s goodness and relied on the Spirit of God for the source of their works. Thus, their names will not be erased from the Lamb’s book of life, and Jesus will confess their good name before the Father and all the heavenly realms. Download Transcript

God’s promises of protection from the wrath to come are given to His bondservants—the Chosen—to those who are deemed to be “in Christ.” But He will be clearing His threshing floor and, in His wrath, bring about a judgment of the religious masses within His household who do not live by grace through faith and therefore CANNOT bear good fruit which comes only through Jesus as a person clings to Him as a branch clings to the vine. Those who love their own goodness and hide behind their tall steep walls of “church worthy” deeds will find themselves on the other side of the rapture, deep within the time of the Lord’s Great wrath. In contrast, those who are now believing are literally saved by His life in theirs, and this is a promise for those who have been reconciled, who have entered into a mutual agreement with Him to no longer function with one another based on law, for it is through the death of the Son that we are reconciled to God. It is a mutual agreement to function based on grace through faith—what He did and what He does. It is always about what He did and what He does. Download Transcript

The Church at Sardis: Overall Theme: Spiritual Delusion=Death The Spirit’s command is that we repent and change how we think about our strong walls of good religious deeds. We must be willing to let God change what we believe about all our church worthy deeds, and what we believe about our need to be dependent upon Jesus for ALL things ALL the time. Jesus warns them (and us) that if we do not wake up and watch He will come like a thief to plunder and disposes from those things that hinder their life, but they will not know the hour He comes, even though He comes when they need him most, when they are abiding in the darkness of night. But since they will not be ready, they will be left naked, exposed for their powerless religion. And when He does come for His Chosen ones, they will find themselves on the other side of the rapture suffering through the day of the Lord’s Wrath. Download Transcript

The Church at Sardis Overall Theme: Spiritual Delusion=Death Many churches, and therefore the spiritual lives of many individuals, have not been founded upon the truth revealed by the Spirit of God. That is not to say that their foundations are void of the truth or of that which has been revealed by the Spirit of God, but it is not complete or secured in Christ. It all starts with one big lie and a faulty and cracked foundation stone. when a person begins their spiritual journey with a lie, it is no wonder that years later they are left with nothing but a stack of lies. Having built their security on a lie, the Sardisians ignored the Substitution Principle: His wisdom for ours, His ways for ours, His deeds for ours, His love for ours, His truth for ours, He security for ours, His provision for ours. We should always be aware of the reality that we love delusion. We love to clothe ourselves in the delusion of goodness. Therefore, as the Spirit instructed, we should test ourselves to see if we are in the faith—to see if we live in abject neediness for Jesus, living like little children, doing only what our Father wants us to do, and nothing more (despite what the religious culture, our conscience, or our own church folk may demand of us) and then doing such things only when He tells us to do His works. Download Transcript