We can grow cold in our love to God. We can fall into sensuality. We can be deceived. But God knocks and bids us open to Him. Revelation 2-4; Luke 8:22-27

Speaker(s): Steve Andrulonis
Sermon 13089
Date: 2026-3-8
Time: Sun 6:30 pm

 

P. Steve Andrulonis –

 

All right. If you could stand, please? And greet someone near you while we get ourselves set up here. Okay. Let’s pray. (Prayer). All right. So, we’re going to talk about Revelation tonight. I’m sure that these verses will be covered again, but that’s okay. You can hear them. 

 

But I think two of my favorite verses, and people who have attended my classes know that I read these verses a lot. Say them a lot. One of them is Psalm 119:96. And this is the King James version. You have to look at this in the King James version because it says it this way. Vs. 96. And I think of that as a promise to us as we go through the book of Revelation, that we have something from God that shows us how things are going to conclude. That if we have faith in the Word of God being what it is, then we can read it and read this part of the Bible and have a great understanding about who God is and what he’s going to do in his eternal purpose.

 

Now, another one. It’s a verse so good. It’s a verse so good that Solomon put it in proverbs twice. You know this verse. I don’t know why I love this verse but I do. It says, “It’s better to dwell in the corner of the housetop than with a brawling woman in a wide house.” You know, when you think about being on the corner of a housetop. Okay. So, I’m going to use the iPad cuz, you know, we know the famous house picture, right? I can’t do it justice. I can’t do it justice. So, that’s that. This is the lower floor. This is the upper floor. But if we extend this out like this, it could be like a broad room with lots of doors. 

 

And who’s lurking here? All kinds of emotional brawlers. Male or female. You know, there’s all kinds of brawlers. But they come out. Where do you got to go? You got to go up here on the corner and then you can see out there. You don’t have to spend your time down here with all – you never know what’s going to fly out of one of those closets, you know. 

 

So, the brawlers are right there trying to wrestle you into distraction. And that’s why I think it’s like good to be, to learn, because we know that this verse it says walk with circumspection, right? From Ephesians. Walk circumspectly. And if you’re on the corner of a housetop, you’ve got to be careful, right? You got to be looking out. 

 

But what can you see there? The vision that you have from there is like really amazing. You could like see far beyond. And going down here is just you’re stuck inside. It’s a lot of turmoil probably. That’s why the verse says what it says. It’s repeated in Prov. 25:24. It’s so nice. We said it twice. It’s amazing. So, that’s one thing. 

 

Now, the next thing I want to go to is Mark 12. We’ll look at Mark 12 here real quick. Mark 12. I like this version better than the other gospel versions. I mean they’re all great. That’s all the Word of God. But in this version told by Mark and maybe dictated to him by Peter, it says the first of all commandments is, “Hear, O Israel. The Lord our God is one Lord.” That’s one. “And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength. This is the first commandment.” It all goes together. 

 

“And then the second is like it, namely that you should love your neighbor as your love yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these.” I think when we look at the Word of God, and it’s my conviction that God orders things not by accident. There’s a design to the way that he orders, the way that things are described in the Bible. 

 

And as we look in Revelation, we have these seven churches. And we’re going to talk about the seven churches. They have different kinds of characteristics about them. And I think they are in a particular order. I don’t think Ephesus is first because of its prominence or preeminence. You could argue with me about that. It might have been the biggest church. It might have been the longest church, but I think it’s first because of the message that is being communicated from Christ – we heard this morning – through the Apostle John and then to the believers in this place. 

 

And that first verse says you have what? What’s the rebuke? You have lost your first love. And I think that’s like I want to get this. What’s the point that Jesus wants to get to like what is probably – I teach church history, so I understand that there was Jerusalem. And then at a season the base of operations, the major base of operations for Christians, for the Christian movement moved to Antioch. 

 

And then from Antioch, I believe it moved to Ephesus. It took a long time before it settled into Rome. Not until the 300s really did Rome become that. And even in that situation during the 300s, Rome was abandoned in some ways. Not abandoned. That’s the wrong word. It became more of a second city to Constantinople which was named for Constantine, and that was moved over more to the center of which is now Istanbul. 

 

So, Ephesus had a problem with, you know, first love, and God wanted to communicate this principle I think. So, when we think about this let’s just draw this. God communicates to us and then he reserves secret things. He looks at things differently. 

 

So, there’s a passage in, what is it? Zechariah 5. You know the passage? There’s like a scroll flying through the air. And the unusual thing about this scroll, I think there’s three scrolls in the Bible that are written on both sides, which if you know the way that ink and vellum and parchment and everything, it would have been impossible for a scroll to be stored if the ink was on both sides. It would have like smeared one side or the other. 

 

But the scrolls that are mentioned in Zechariah 5, I think it’s vs. 1-3. There’s a scroll and it says something is, you know, there’s a – there you go. Vs. 1. Go to the next verse. Vs. 2. All right. That’s just some interesting information about how large it is. That’s okay. Go to the third verse. Go to the next verse, vs. 4. I think the next verse says it there. All right. Go to vs. 5. Okay. I’m sorry. I thought it was written. Anyway, it’s written on both sides. At some point in the chapter, you find out that the scroll is written on both sides. Same thing with Ezekiel. I think chapter 2. There’s scrolls that are written on two sides. 

 

But I think that says that, you know, there’s one side we see something and we see another, we see things differently. God has his viewpoint and this viewpoint is different. This is really found in Daniel. I think in Daniel we know that the king gets a vision and his vision of a statue. And the statue and the head and it gets all the way down to feet like that. And the statue up here at the top of that head is gold and that’s the way the man dreams. And that’s the way the man sees things. Like his government is going to be gold. Nebuchadnezzar’s government is going to be gold and there’s a reason for that. 

 

Why was his government gold? It was because at a certain point in his life, he became humbled and worshipped the God of heaven because of the witness of Daniel. But the others – silver, and that’s a different kind of government. And then bronze, which is a government based on judgment and law. Iron, a judgment based on I think force and then the feet of clay and iron, which is like you’re trying to get like, you’re trying to mold things together that don’t go together. And so, that’s one view. 

 

But if you go to Daniel 7, I believe later in the book you see a different view. Daniel gets another dream and all of these things are beasts, and they’re beasts that are like malignancies. They’ve got different things that you’ve never seen before. I think the first one is a lion. P. Toll, what’s the first one? Lion. It’s a lion. But it has wings, right? There’s a lion with wings and then there’s a leopard. And then the final one is a monstrosity. It’s got iron teeth and it smashes everything. And that’s the last one. So, you got beasts here. Beasts all the way down.

 

So, man sees things one way and God reveals things another way. There’s an order to that. So, I said all that to get us to a certain place in Revelation here. And we started Revelation this morning, and we want to look at this passage here. Just understanding that we see the end of all perfection and that, you know, the Bible tells us something and the order of it. 

 

The last thing should be seen in the light of the first thing. Jesus said the last shall be first. And I think when we read things in the Bible, we should view them, we should view the last things in the context of what we see in the first thing. All right. 

 

So, take the Ten Commandments for example. What is the first commandment? Love the Lord thy God, right? You shall have no gods before me. That’s #1. What’s #10. Begins with C. Thou shalt not covet, right? So, if you love the Lord your God with all your heart, will you covet? Because you don’t need anything, right? That’s the thing. 

 

The next one is don’t make any graven images. Don’t contrive an idol. And that’s really kind of interesting. And then because if you contrive an idol, you’re working very hard to create something that’s already there. I mean, really. That’s something that’s way beyond. There’s God above and beyond. 

 

Why would you create an idol of something that the Creator made? And this is if you love God, if you have no gods before him, idolatry is hard work. And then it leads to commandment #3, which is you shall not take the Lord’s name in vain. God has provided a character throughout his Creation that you see as vanity when you make an idol. It’s like, Oh, this is really cool. I should make something.

 

There’s a king. There was a king who was in Syria and he saw like this cool altar and he like, you know, he emailed back to the priest. They didn’t have email back then, but he sent a message back to the priest with designs. And he said I want this altar ready for me when I get back. And we’re going to present burnt offerings on this altar and you’re going to move the – he actually moved the brazen altar that Solomon had built. He moved it to the side to make way for this new altar. 

 

So, a lot of hard work. You know, you read in Isaiah, you burn a log and then you roast your meat on the log and then you got a little bit left and you say, I think I’ll make a god out of it. Little G.I. Joe type guy. Little soldier. 

 

I’m from the days when G.I. Joe’s were 12 inches tall. And that’s, you know, and I had like a Mercury spaceship and the G.I. Joe. I got a picture of me holding it up on Christmas morning. It was amazing. I kept that G. I. Joe until I was 13. I gave it away to go to a basketball game. Probably took a girl. That’s probably the way it went back then. Anyway, but G.I. Joe went. G.I. Joe. It was one of those guys with the real hair and by a certain point, he had all kinds of bald spots and he was losing his beard. But I had him for a long time until I was 13. I’m sorry. I was almost in 8th grade at Golden Ring idle School, Junior High School back then. 

 

But anyway. So, making idols is very hard. And then we know #4 is remember the Sabbath. Remember the Sabbath. So, you have turned God, you made the character of God something empty to you by making an idol and then you can’t get to #4 because you can’t have any rest. 

 

Now, remember the people of Israel. They did not make their own way out of Egypt. God did that series of plagues. He gave them the secret to escaping the death angel. It’s a Passover lamb. And that’s all over Revelation. The Lamb who was slain. That’s the 10th plague. 

 

And then when God led them out, he led them by fire and a cloud. He led them through the sea. They did not work for that deliverance. But can you imagine you have been slaves in Israel for more than 400 years and all of a sudden, God says, okay. On this day you will do nothing. It was like, it must have been like to see the looks on their faces. What do you mean, nothing? 

 

Nothing. No building bricks, no sweating, no laying – you can lay down on the job. You can sleep the day away. Get your food ready in the evening and the next day be ready to rest, because his yoke is easy and his burden is light. And that’s the thing. So, that’s why I’m saying the order there. 

 

Like if you have the first thing in order, you probably will be able to keep all the other commandments. If God – there’s no other gods before him, you’re not going to covet things because you are already – did you ever watch the Jamaican bobsled movie, “Cool Runnings?” Yeah. You ever watch it? It’s kind of – I watched it because, we watched it one night because the Olympics are going on. And it’s kind of interesting and there’s a big guy, John Candy, and he says something. He says, if you, if you’re not enough before you get the gold medal, you will never be enough after you get the gold medal. 

 

It’s like, you know, so this is the thing. If we have this commandment #1 settled in our hearts, If we love the Lord thy God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, we have no gods before him; then the neighbor stuff is simple because we’re glorifying God. We’re not taking his name in vain. And when we need to rest, we have no problem resting because he lets us do that. 

 

So, what I’m saying now to get to this part here. Finally get into Revelation. Boy, that took a little bit of time, but it’s good. All right. So, I’m not going to read all of these things, but these are specific phrases, sentences directed to each of these real churches that existed. And we talked about this. 

 

It says, I know your works, Rev. 2:2. That’s very good. You’re doing pretty well there. But I have something against you. I have something against you. You have left your first love. You have left your first love. Now, okay. So, you’re doing all these things but what’s the potential? What will be the potential if you’re out of order here? You’re out of order here. 

 

And we see this now. Smyrna. We got to skip over Smyrna. They’re a small church. They’re afflicted. They’re in poverty. They get slandered. But God says, Fear not. And something about them is going to be great. They are going to walk in white. And the tribulation. The tribulation. They’re going to be faithful unto death. 

 

But then we see in Pergamos. Pergamos. Yeah. It’s you know, I’ve actually, they took this devil’s seat that it’s talking about here. Satan’s seat. And where is he? Is he here? Pastor from Berlin. Stefan. Where’s Stefan Stein? Where is he? I saw him come in tonight. There he is. He’s in the middle. That’s right. He took me to the museum and we actually went – did you go with us that day? No. I think it was somebody. We went there. But we went to Satan’s seat. It’s actually this altar that they took from Pergamos and they moved it to Berlin. And there’s like a legend about Hitler having something going on around it and everything like that. But this is Satan’s seat in Pergamos. In Pergamos, they has this place, demonic opposition. And these things happened. There was a, you know, demons could affect the false teaching. And so what happened? Carnal practices, sensuality. It took over in this place. 

 

In Thyatira, we have a personality cult that develops around someone who preaches dead things, and the dead things lead to a lot of immorality. And that happens in Sardis. They are dead. The works that they do, they’re not going anywhere. Ephesus may have been getting there. We don’t know. Ephesus may have been getting there, because they are doing all these things but they’ve lost their first love. 

 

And then Philadelphia is a church that we know, that you know gets accommodation. It’s hanging on. There’s an open door for them and no man can shut that. And they are doing the works of God. They are keeping the Word. Even though there’s people who are like a synagogue of Satan attacking them, but they have kept the word of his patience. 

 

And remember that in each of these things, there’s something significant that’s communicated. Vs. 11. Goes back to that passage in Mark 12 where Jesus is saying this is the first commandment. Hear, O Israel. And this is what we’re bringing back, what God is bringing us back to. 

 

And then we get to, we all know about Laodicea, right? We’ve all heard we don’t want to be Laodicean, right? We’ve all heard we don’t want to be Laodicean. None of us wants to be. What is it? What would be? We don’t want to be familiar, right? Familiar. Lukewarm. Just casual about who we are and what we are. And again, this could be like if you lose your first love, where are you going? Like you might wake up a little bit in time of turmoil and you just have to wrestle and fight. You might die a martyr. That happened to a lot of the people in Smyrna. 

 

You know, in Philadelphia, you might be a Philadelphia church doing a lot, going into all the world. But you could also sink into being Laodicean. Your works. They’re not cold. They’re not hot. You are casually going through life. 

 

But notice this. Here’s the thing. I love the way the Bible works this out. If the Samaria Kingdom, the Northern Kingdom of Israel, the great prophets went to them first, Elijah and Elisha. It’s like the farther they sort of drifted from God, God said, I’m going to send in the dynamite right now. This is my Delta Force, my Seal team 6. Is that a, is that, that’s probably a TV cartoon or something. Anyway, I’m going to send in these guys. I’m going to send Elijah and Elisha and they are going to do things and say things. And this happens before the great fall off and the great captivity that happens in that northern kingdom of Israel, Samaria. 

 

And, you know, God sends prophets again and again. Jeremiah comes. Isaiah comes. These are people sent. And this is the message that I think that we need when you’re Laodicean. Here’s the hope. The message of hope. As many as I love. Vs. 19. I rebuke, I reprove, I chasten. Be zealous, therefore and repent. Can I say with this to these people? Can I say with this? Can Christ say through John with this to these people. Be zealous and repent. 

 

And here’s the kicker, vs. 20. It’s like God is right there. Have you notice that through the Bible? When Adam and Eve were hiding away, did God like just, okay. They’ll catch up with me later. I’ll just like, I’ll just shut the door and I’ll keep these guys right there. They can have their fig leaves. Man, you know, I’ll be ready when they make a garment out of poison ivy and poison oak and then they’ll come to me looking for some sort of ointment or something like that. No, God seeks them. He says, Where are you? Where are you? 

 

You know, there’s a great old, old, old song. I think the man just had his 80th birthday. Don Francisco. He wrote a song called “Adam.” And it’s like, you know, all down through the ages, the son of man has been running helter skelter with his fingers in his ears. And I’ve never and the voice of God goes out with an urgency that I’ve never heard before to finally come in through the darkness before it’s finally time to shut the door. Before it’s finally time to shut the door. Is God – you lost your first love. You’re living in sensuality. You’re listening to false doctrine and false teachers. 

 

Any one of these, I could be any of these churches at any time in my life. These five. I could. I don’t want to be Smyrna. I really would, I don’t know what I would, how I would handle martyrdom, but it could – you ever seen the movie John Hus? He’s like when just before he gets burned at the stake, he’s trying to train himself by putting his hand over the candle and he can’t handle it. But when he goes to the stake and they light the fire, he begins singing, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me. Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.” And like, you know, he goes into eternity. Did he taste death? Maybe the Spirit wiped his brow. I don’t know. 

 

But you know any of these seven churches I could be on any particular day and I’ve been Laodicean a lot. I have. But I know that there’s the knock at the door. There’s the knock at the door that comes and opens. And that’s the thing when you look in chapter 4, when you go into chapter 4, here’s the thing. The see the end of all perfection. To be looking at things from the corner of the rooftop and not down in the room with the brawlers. Here’s the thing. 

 

If you read this, it says, Rev. 4:1. I open the door to God. He comes in and sits with me. And then if I come out of that door, he leads me out of that door. There’s an open door to everything, every possibility that he would want to use me for. My purpose, my purpose is not gone because I’ve fallen into these failures. Failure isn’t final with the Lord. That’s another old song. We’re just quoting them all. Just go back to the 70s and 80s. Find a playlist there. It’s all on YouTube. It’s amazing. Yeah. 

 

But failure isn’t final with the Lord. But the thing I want you to look at here where – where is it? It’s in here somewhere. Vs. 6. So, this is the throne room. In the throne room, we have wild beasts, the lions. We have oxen, the domesticated beasts. We have the reasonable beasts. Who is that? Man. The reasonable beast. Yeah, we’re so reasonable and rational that we can kill lots of people, more than lions and tigers and bears. And then we also have eagles, angelic. All of Creation is in this throne room singing, Holy, Holy, Holy. 

 

But here’s the one that I want to look at here. Before the throne, there was a sea of glass like crystal. Sea of glass like crystal. It’s like now we’ve heard that people look into that to see what we’re doing. I can’t find a verse of Scripture to support that. But that doesn’t mean it can’t happen. It may be true looking through the crystal sea. 

 

But if you go to another passage, this is Luke 8. This is the storm passage. Vs. 22-25. And this is the big one. Guys, where’s your faith? Then he went back and went to sleep. I think that’s, I mean, this is what I’m saying in chapter 4 of Revelation. This is the picture. I’m thinking he made a crystal sea on the Sea of Galilee. Because what the throne room of God tells me is that all is well in the throne room of God. All of Creation is in order. And all of Creation that is bowing before the Lord is singing to him, holy, holy, holy. And that’s not changing. 

 

The crystal sea is flat. It’s still. And just like that sea there that Jesus stilled in the Gospel. I think of Isaiah. When Isaiah was brought into the throne room of God, something had happened. A very, very capable, wise king had died and the throne on earth was empty. But God said, the throne on earth, Isaiah, the throne on earth may be empty, but Isaiah, I want you to see something. I want you to see that everything is all right in my Father’s house. 

 

Here. The crystal sea. Everything is smooth and all is going as God is planning it. And this is the thing. So, storm on the sea. Jesus asks – the disciples are saying we are perishing and Jesus says, Where is your faith? And we start a lot of storms ourselves. We make turbulence. We lose our first love. 

 

But Jesus is saying to us, behold, I stand at the door and knock and knock and I’ll come in with you. I’ll come in to be with you. This is, this is – what is it? This is what he’s wanting us to hear I think. Reclaim. I need to reclaim that first love maybe every day. There’s so much information flowing my way that I need to really get settled. I need to see the end of all perfection. 

 

And I need to stop playing in the internet rooms where there are brawling people. And I’m just like saying women and men. You just get on the internet and you say things that you don’t understand and oh, you know. Anyway. I do it, too. I’m on the internet. I just want to say, but I’m just saying that it’s like this is, don’t get lost in there. God is trying to, God is trying to show us the smooth crystal sea to our hearts. That’s what he wants. His commandment is exceedingly broad. It says, second part of Psalm 119:96, his commandment covers all things. We get to the corner of the rooftop. If we’re up there, we’re wise and we look and we don’t have to worry about what’s going down in that wide room with all the doors. No, we’re up there looking, expecting God. Jesus says, I love you. I seek you. Where are you? Where is your faith? And we fumble through that, but there’s mercy. There’s mercy. Mercy rejoices. He’s not ready to strike us. He’s like, he’s seeking us. Mercy rejoices against judgment. Can we understand that?

 

He says I’m knocking at the door. I’m knocking at the door. You know the bride in Song of Solomon, she got a knock at the door and she was Laodicean. I’m not getting up right now. Sorry. Got my feet in the bed. I’m all cozy. I’m warm. It’s too cold for me. Then she realized he’s gone. And then she goes seeking him and she finds him. Finds him in a field. What a picture that is for us. That’s where we would find God knocking on the door. Open the door. He’ll come into you.

 

And because, and I’m just making this point because I love the picture. Because Jesus is a priest after the order of Melchizedek, if I open the door, he’s going to sit down at the table and he’s going to bring the bread and he’s going to bring the wine. And that’s, you know, I didn’t even have to provide the meal. 

 

You know, Abraham had one time when he met Melchizedek like that. He met the Lord later and he did prepare a meal. It could go both ways. That happened in Genesis. But this is the point. Jesus is knocking at the door. Our first love, it can be. It can get cold. It can get cold but he has everything in order. And the chaos that’s all around us, he’s going to get us to the other side, just like he did with the disciples there. Open the door. I got to open the door. I got to open the door. 

 

And then the great thing is after I’ve had a good meal with Jesus, he’ll walk me out that door. And there’ll be a door that no man can shut. You’ll be in some kind of purpose that you never, that we never thought possible. And that’s the truth for all of us. Amen. Amen. All right. Let’s pray. (Prayer). 

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