<p>3:20- see on Mt. 24:15.</p><p><em>Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will eat with him and he with me</em>- The Lord stands at the door and knocks at His return, and the faithful will open immediately to Him (Lk. 12:36). And yet the essence of His coming is now. He wishes to enter hearts; those who accept His Spirit have Him 'coming' to them (Jn. 14:18 s.w.). His presence through the Comforter is just as real as was His presence amongst men in Palestine during His mortal ministry. The Lord is here writing to those who have turned away from Him in Laodicea. He is urging them to let Him come to them, to allow the Spirit to enter and fill them.</p><p>The Lord stresses, with apparently needless repetition, that to the man who responds to His word, &quot;I will eat with him and he with me&quot;. There is something very touching in the picture of a man living alone (unusual in the first century), presumably due to old age or persecution, with no wife (either dead or left him); and the Lord of all knocks at his door. He lets him in (i.e. responds to the word of Christ), and they eat together. Two men, eating a man's meal, earnestly bent together over the table. It's a fine picture of the mutuality between the Lord and the believer. Even in failure and weak moments, that mutuality is still there. The same word is used of the Lord having &quot;supper&quot; and 'eating' with us in the communion meal (Lk. 22:20; 1 Cor. 11:25), and so the fellowship of the breaking of bread is also specifically in view.</p><p>In the latter day application, the Lord knocking on the door and 'coming' when the believer opens, hints at His second coming once the ecclesia shows a suitable level of spiritual response.&nbsp;In the same letter to Laodicea, the ecclesia being &quot;rich and increased with goods&quot; (:17) recalls the days of Lot and Noah, both typical of the second coming, and the unworthy walking naked is a figure picked up in 16:15 concerning judgment day. Our attitude and response in the split second when we know 'He's back' will effectively be our judgment. When the Lord speaks about knocking on the door of our hearts and our response (Rev. 3:20), He is picking up the language of the Song of Solomon 5:2-8, where the bridegroom (cp. Jesus) knocks at the door of the bride. But notice the sequence there:</p><p>While she sleeps at night, the bridegroom comes and knocks unworthy virgins sleeping instead of being awake; the Lord Jesus comes <br />She replies that she's not dressed properly, makes excuses about her feet, she can't come and open the unworthy don't respond immediately <br />He tries to open the door from the outside, putting his hand through the latch-hole by grace, after the pattern of Lot being encouraged to leave Sodom when he hesitated, the Lord will be patient even with sleepy virgins in His desire for their salvation <br />Her heart is moved with desire for him the rejected still call Jesus 'Lord, Lord'; they love Him emotionally <br />She starts dressing herself up, and then is overtaken by desire and rushes to the door, her hands dripping all kinds of perfume and make up over the lock as she opens it cp. the virgins going to buy oil, the unworthy trying to prepare themselves all too late, not trusting that their Lord loves them as they are at the moment of His coming <br />But he's gone , he <em>withdraws himself</em> all too late, the door is shut, He never knew them <br />Her soul fails the shock of rejection <br />She seeks him but doesn't find him, calls but he doesn't answer Prov. 1:28; the rejected call, but aren't answered; they seek the Lord early, but don't find Him. Hos.&nbsp; 5:6 is likewise relevant: &quot;They shall go with their flocks and with their herds to <em>seek </em>the LORD; but they shall not find him; he hath <em>withdrawn himself</em> from them&quot;. <br />She feels tired of her relationship with him (&quot;sick of love&quot;). <br />She is persecuted by the world around her &quot;condemned with the world&quot;</p><p>The basic point is that if we don't immediately respond to the Lord's knock, we show ourselves to not love Him enough. If we don't open immediately, it's as if we didn't open at all. The Lord wants us as we are, bleary eyed and without our make up, but with a basic overriding love of Him, and faith in the depth of His love, which will lead us to immediately go out to meet Him. And as noted above, His coming to us is effectively now. We shall open to Him in that day if we have opened our hearts to Him today.</p>