Laodicea: The Lukewarm Church Part 1

Laodicea – Part 1

I've spoken of the church of Laodicea (Revelation 3) in previous posts and how many churches today fit Jesus' description of this church. John MacArthur has given a couple of sermons on this subject and I agree with him 100%. As you read the following sermons by John, prayerfully consider your own spiritual life. 2 1/2 years ago I examined my spiritual life and how I was living my life in this world and discovered that I had it all wrong.

I had not overcome the world, I had not followed God's will for me and I had not been born again (regenerated spiritually by God) - and even though the Bible told me that all of these things must happen for me to enter heaven - I really thought I was going to heaven when I died. I rarely prayed, chased after money and glory for myself and even helped bring pornography into people's homes (through my job as a cable company General Manager) - but because I 'believed' Jesus died for me, I didn't think any of this really mattered. I had it all figured out - I just had to believe and then do whatever I wanted. I attended church on Sunday and believed - isn't this all that is required? If I had been paying attention, I would have noticed that even though everyone considered me a 'good' person and many considered me 'successful', my life was not generating good spiritual fruit.

I came to the realization on a small deserted hill in Knoxville, TN that I had allowed myself to be blinded from the Truth. In that moment, I felt God's authority over the entire world and I saw myself from God's perspective - I was not wearing white, I was stained crimson by sin. My sins were not covered by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ - I remained under the Lord's judgment. I remember rubbing my hands together like Pilate, hoping that the sin could be removed this way - knowing it was futile. So, I laid my life and everything I had in this world at the Lord's feet and asked Him to cleanse me. I no longer wanted the world or the things in it - I wanted to know the Lord. After humbly asking for forgiveness, I was given white clothes to wear and eyes to see - just as He told me He would. Over the next 2 1/2 years I was given faith refined by fire - a real, true faith in Jesus Christ. He will do the same for you.

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Laodicea: The Lukewarm Church, Part 1
Revelation 3:14-18

Now let's open our Bibles to Revelation chapter 3 and we come to the last of the letters to the seven churches, the letter to the church at Laodicea, the church that made the Lord Jesus Christ sick...the lukewarm church.

These letters, as you know, are directed at seven churches, actual churches, historical churches in actual cities in Asia Minor. But they transcend their time and space and they become model letters to various kinds of churches that exist in all eras of church history. They illustrate for us the character of churches in our own day, in fact since Pentecost. And Laodicea, is the last, is the worst. Five churches with serious problems have already been addressed and they are on somewhat of a descending scale. As you move through the seven letters, remember two of them had no condemnation, that's Smyrna and Philadelphia. The other five progressively degenerate.

There was Ephesus, the church still strong doctrinally, but the church that left its first love. There was Pergamos which had not denied the faith but was tolerating sin. There was Thyatira where there was still some good things going on but full-blown compromise with evil had taken place and the majority seemed to have been involved. Then there was Sardis, a church with only a few genuine believers, a church which had a name but was actually dead.

And now at the bottom, if you will, is Laodicea. This is an unsaved church. In fact, if there were any believers in this church they aren't even referred to in the letter at all. It is a church that is characterized by lukewarmness which becomes a metaphor for being non-saved people. Laodicea has the grim distinction of being among all seven letters the only one in which Christ has nothing good to say. It is unmitigated, unspared condemnation. There is in this church apparently absolutely no redeeming feature. This is the unsaved, unregenerate false church.

Also, because of the nature of the church this is the most threatening epistle. This is the most blistering rebuke. And it is sent to a proud church.

Now the richness of this letter will become apparent to you as we endeavor to examine it. It begins in chapter 3 and verse 14 and runs to the end of the chapter. In order to understand, however, the richness that is contained in the letter, you really have to understand some background. And we're going to work our way through that background, listen carefully and it will make the whole letter come alive to you

First of all, we begin in verse 14, "And to the angel," that is the messenger, the one who was to deliver the letter, the word angel, angelos, being angel or messenger. This was the seventh of the messengers that had received these letters from the Apostle John on the Isle of Patmos. And as they moved from city to city, each one would arrive at his own church with the letter for that church. We don't know whether each of them had a copy of the whole of the apocalypse, the whole of the revelation. But we do know that each one would have a copy of the letter specifically for their own church. This being the seventh, this man must have made the journey by himself. Alone he travels to Laodicea to give them a letter which surely he has read and reread.

"To the angel of the church in Laodicea write," and here we're introduced to the correspondent. "The amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God, says this." Now you remember that in each case the letter begins with an identification of the one who writes, none other than the Lord Jesus Christ. You also remember that for the most part the identifying characteristics are taken from the vision of Christ that is given in chapter 1.

However, in this case this is a somewhat unique introduction. The Lord identifies Himself here in three titles. He calls Himself the amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God.

First of all, the amen. That is a unique title. And it probably reflects a Hebrew original. Back in Isaiah 65:16 it says, "The God of amen." That's Hebrew for truth, or affirmation, or certainty. God was called the God of truth then, the God of certainty, the God of affirmation. Whatever God says is so, whatever God says is true, whatever God says is certain therefore He's the God of amen.

Now the word "amen" is often used in Scripture as a word to affirm the veracity of a statement. Sometimes it is used before a statement and when it is it is usually translated "verily, verily," or "truly, truly," but in the Greek language, for example, it is "amen, amen." You often see before some very significant statement "amen, amen." And there it is to affirm the truthfulness of what is to be said.

Sometimes you see it at the very end. And at the end it is to seal the certainty of what has been said. Amen means firm, fixed, certain, faithful, unchangeable. Those are all words that surround the meaning of amen.

Now how is Christ here the amen? Well we could say that He is the amen in the sense that He is God. If God is the Old Testament amen, certainly Jesus Christ being God in human flesh is the New Testament amen. But there's more to it than just the reference to deity. He could have chosen a number of things to refer to Himself as God, but choosing the amen takes it a step further. He is the amen because He is true, He is the amen because He is certain.

But more than that, more specifically even than that general affirmation, Scripture tells us in 2 Corinthians 1:20 a very important truth. It says, "For all the promises of God in Him are amen." All the promises of God in Him are amen. What does that mean? That means that all God's promises and all God's covenants are guaranteed and affirmed by the person and work of Jesus Christ. In the Old Testament God said I will forgive your sins. God could never do that if it were not for the person and work of Christ, right? Because forgiveness was purchased by His atoning death. All of the promises that God made to take men and show them mercy and loving kindness, grace and give them a Kingdom and a hope and an eternal life are bound up in Jesus Christ fulfilling His work. So that everything that God ever planned or purposed for man, everything that God ever promised for man finds its amen in Jesus Christ. God's promises are all certain in Him. They all become sure in Him. And so, Jesus Christ is God's amen, the one who confirmed all the promises.

Then He identifies Himself as the faithful and true witness. This further elucidates the same line of thinking as the word amen. As I noted, amen has reference to truth and certainty and He follows that up by saying He is the faithful and true witness. Not only is Jesus by His work the amen, or the one who makes the promises of God certain, but every time He speaks what He says is also true. What He did puts the amen to punctuate the promises of God, what He says is always true. He is the faithful and true witness. He is completely trustworthy. He is perfectly accurate. His testimony never fails to be reliable. In fact, in John 14:6 He said, "I am the way, the truth and the life." He is, of course, the perfect true witness.

Back in John chapter 3 in verse 31 we read this, "He who comes from above is above all. He who is of the earth is from the earth and speaks of the earth. He who comes from heaven is above all...speaking of Himself...what He has seen and heard of that He bears witness and no man receives His witness. He who has received His witness has set His seal to this, that God is true." Jesus comes, He speaks. Men reject Him. But whoever accepts what He says is saying God is true. He is the amen of God, He is the faithful, true witness who speaks the very Word of God. He is then living verification and confirmation of the promises of God in everything He does and He affirms the truth of God in everything He says. He is absolutely true.

And this is a good way to begin the letter because it affirms to the people in Laodicea that He knows what He's talking about. That whatever assessment He gives of the church is absolutely accurate, that whatever promise He offers the church is absolutely affirmed in His perfect work. When He rightly assesses their unredeemed condition, He is a faithful and true witness to that condition. When He offers them the promise of fellowship in verse 20 which is a promise of salvation, He can offer that because He is the amen who seals the covenant of God, the promise of God.

The third thing He says about Himself is He is the beginning of the creation of God. The English here, frankly, is a bit ambiguous. But that ambiguity disappears when you understand what He means by what He says. When He says He is the beginning of the creation of God, He doesn't mean that the first thing God ever created was Him. He doesn't say He was the first creature God ever created. He says He is the beginning of the creation. What He means by that is He is the source of it. He is the power by which creation began.

It should be noted for you that this letter sent to the church at Laodicea has much in common with Paul's letter to the church at Colossae. They were very close together. In fact, you could say that three cities were sister cities...Hierapolis, Laodicea, and Colossae. Apparently there was a heresy in Colossae about Jesus Christ. And that heresy said that He was a created being and not at all God. It wouldn't be too hard to surmise that that heresy that depreciated the deity of Jesus Christ had gone up the road a little bit and hit Laodicea. And when Jesus says here He is the beginning of the creation of God, He is the arche, He is saying essentially the same thing that Paul said in Colossians chapter 1 verse 15, "He is the image of the invisible God, the prototokos of all creation, of all those who have ever lived He is the supreme one." And of course, in His humanity He did become man. But he says, "By Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things have been created by Him and for Him. He is before all things...that is prior to them...in Him all things hold together. He is the head of the body of the church." Here it is, "He is the beginning."

Apparently there was some question about Him because obviously Jesus had become a man, was born. He, of creation, was the prototokos, the supreme person ever born. But though He was born as man He always existed as God and while as man He had a beginning, as God He was the beginning. And so here, I believe, is a very important note. I believe the reason you have an unsaved church in Laodicea is because they had an errant doctrine about Christ. It was their heretical Christology that produced an unregenerate church. And what our Lord is saying to them in this letter is you must understand who I am, I am the one who has confirmed all the promises and covenants of God, I am the one who speaks truth and only truth and I am the beginning of the creation.

Colossae was ten miles away. Those two churches were sister churches. It is very likely that whatever Christological heresy had filtered its way into the Colossian church and attacked the deity of Christ, and reduced Him to a created angelic being had also affected the church in Laodicea. This church had bought in to that erroneous view of Christ and consequently was unsaved and lost. That is a tragic thing. But always you will note the damning error is the error about Christ, is it not? Start naming the cults and what is in common with all of them? They deny what? The deity of Jesus Christ.

When Paul was closing the letter to the Colossians, verse 16 of chapter 4, the last little part of Colossians, he said, "When this letter is read among you, have it also read in the church of the Laodiceans." Why? Well they must have been into the same error. And then he says, "And you for your part, read my letter that is coming from Laodicea." That would have been the epistle that we know as Ephesians...most likely. So whatever was going on in Colossae probably had spilled over, only the church in Colossae was fighting it and the church in Laodicea had bought it.

So when He calls Himself the beginning, He is the arche, that is the beginner, the originator, the initiator. It's the same idea as in Revelation 22:13 where He says, "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end." He is the first, He is the Alpha, He is the originator, He is the beginning. John put it this way, "By Him were all things made that were made."

So, the Lord Jesus Christ is preeminent as the amen, as the faithful and true witness, and as the creator. He is sovereign, saving God, the uncreated source of creation.

So, the letter begins, "The Lord who has created everything, the faithful and true witness to the Word of God, the one in whom all spiritual promises are fulfilled says this..."

Now I want to talk a little bit about the city, the city of Laodicea because it's absolutely essential and fascinating to understand this city. It was located in the Lycus River Valley, the southwest area of Phrygia. Of the seven cities in the letters, it is the most southeasterly. It is 45 miles southeast of Philadelphia and would be about directly east of Ephesus about 100 miles. So these seven letters traverse a little bit of a loop in Asia Minor. Hierapolis, one of the sister cities six miles north, Colossae, ten miles to the east and south a bit. Because of the Lycus Valley being one of the most common routes of travel to the west, people obviously wanting to travel through a valley rather than across mountains.

Laodicea became a very important city. Anytime these cities were on a trade route they became significant. Not only was it a significant city on the east/west trade route, but it was also a significant city on the north/south road from Pergamos and Sardis, moving south to the coast. So they were crisscrossing all these people who went east and west and north and south and coming through the city of Laodicea. It had been founded by Antiochus II in the third century B.C. He named it for his wife.

The modern name of this Turkish city is Eskee Hizar(??), still there. Eskee Hizar means in Turkish "the old fortress," named for some of the ancient ruins. It is interesting to note that it had a large Jewish population and that large Jewish population probably was the starting point for the development of the church. You say, "Where do we find that it has a large Jewish population?" Quite, interesting. Every year Jews had to pay a temple tax, didn't matter where they lived or where they were, they had to pay that, that was part of their religious duty and they had to pay that temple tax, any male Jew over twenty-one. It amounted to half a shekel. In 62 B.C. Flockus(?) the governor put a stop to any exporting of gold from Laodicea. We have this in archaeological records. He needed it to back the currency. So he said no gold can be exported out of Laodicea.

Well, the Jews always paid their tax with gold. They would do this, all the Jews in a local town would get together, they would put it all together in one lump of gold, that's how they would pay their tax, one lump package of gold. In spite of Flockus' order they sent their gold anyway back to Jerusalem to pay their temple tax. The Laodicean authorities confiscated it and they weighed it in at what amounts in our terms to about twenty pounds. Twenty pounds would be equal to about 7,500 shekels. So you can see that there were quite a number of Jews. That's only the males over twenty one, plus the females and the children. Significant number of Jews.

These Jews existed in the midst of a pagan culture. They had probably come there because they were entrepreneurial and wanted to start their businesses. And they found themselves in the midst of pagan culture and morality and they became mixed with it. And if you read in the Talmud, you will read, interestingly enough, about Laodicea. And you will read that Laodicean Jews had come to the apex of ease and laxity. It probably was that Jewish contingent that was the first point of evangelization. That was certainly Paul's normal process and though Paul never went to Laodicea, when the church was founded there it was probably founded something along the path of his kind of strategy which was to go to the synagogue first. There would have been a synagogue there for sure with that many Jews, a very large one.

Now there's something else to know about this city and I think it's fascinating. Crucial to this city was its water supply. There were some local streams in the area but as the population grew and developed the local streams and rivers were inadequate. In fact some of them dried up in the winter. And so water had to be brought in. Well the only way they could bring it in there was by an underground aqueduct. And being very enterprising they managed to build an aqueduct and the water flowed down this aqueduct into the city of Laodicea. It did have an impact on their strength militarily because anybody could come along and conquer them by just cutting off the water supply, finding where the aqueduct was, identifying it, sealing it off and just sitting out and waiting until the siege of the city accomplished its end as the people had no water. And though it was fortified architecturally, an enemy could find the aqueduct and leave them rather helpless. So it never became much of a military power.

Kenneth Dodders(?) written some interesting things about this city and he says this, "They couldn't use the Lycus or the Maeander Rivers for drinking because they were too dirty. Besides, the Lycus River often dried up during the dry season. Most of the springs in the area are hot springs full of gasses and other chemicals. The Laodiceans had no choice, they had to pipe in water from a distant spring through twin lines of stone pipe, each stone was about three feet across and hallowed through the middle. The water carried by those pipes was so charged with impurities that it dropped much of its load in flow. The calcium carbonate gradually clogged the pipes. The water was collected in a central water tower, then distributed through the streets by pipes radiating from it. The water tower and sections of the terra cotta pipes are still visible even today. It is evident, at least, that the water it carried was bad, for thick deposits of calcareous impurities can still be seen almost choking the surviving section of the pipes. So whatever water finally got to the city was dirty, impure.

Another writer says the orientation of the aqueduct has suggested to archaeologists that the springs at the modern town of Denzilly(?) five miles to the south were the source. So here ran this little aqueduct to get them water. This was a major issue because a city can't exist, obviously, without that.

A second key feature that's going to come into play in the letter that dominates the city is the commercial aspect. There are several things you need to know about the commercial aspect of the city. First of all, it was a banking center...it was a banking center. It was very wealthy apparently because it was on the crossroads, north, south, east, west, it became a business hub and it became a banking center for people moving in all directions to put their funds. They became so very wealthy that when in 60 A.D. the city was totally flattened by an earthquake, Rome offered to give them some money to rebuild and they refused it saying they had plenty of their own. The people of Laodicea prided themselves in rejecting the offer of financial help from Rome and rebuilt the city far more beautiful than it had ever been and they did it with their own funds.

Tacitus writes, "Laodicea arose from the ruins by the strength of her own resources and with no help from us." Tacitus, the Roman historian. And so they were extremely wealthy.

A second feature in the commercial area had to do with the wool industry. Laodicea became famous for its wool industry and the major product, this is very interesting, was a soft wool that was glossy black in color, shiny black. It was used for clothing and it was used also for weaving into carpets, both locally and after export.

The third key feature about the city in a commercial sense was its medical school. It had about thirteen miles north of the city a very famous medical school. It was basically established in connection with an ancient temple that was associated with the god identified later by the name of Aesculapius, the god of healing who is still around in old medical literature. The medical school had famous teachers, but the thing that was most prominent in the medical school was they developed a certain salve for the eye. And people from all over that part of the world when they had an eye ailment would come to this medical school near Laodicea to get the eye salve that they would then put on their eyes which would bring some measure of comfort and healing.

So as you look at the commercial aspect of Laodicea you see finance, black wool and eye salve. And all three of those industries play a major part in this letter. And so does the water supply.

The third thing I want to mention about is the church. "He says to the angel of the church in Laodicea," now there's no record of the founding of the church but we can sort of put two and two together. While the Apostle Paul was ministering in Ephesus his friend Epaphras evangelized the Lycus valley. And he even evangelized Laodicea, that's in Colossians 1:7. Out of Ephesus where Paul was building this sort of mother church, people were going and founding other churches and Epaphras went to Laodicea about a hundred miles to the east and a bit south and founded the church there. By the time Paul wrote Colossians in the early sixties, he had not personally visited Laodicea or Colossae for that matter. He told Philemon, you remember, in verse 22 of Philemon that he wanted to come and visit Colossae. He said he would be soon released and be able to come and visit there.

So Paul never went there. It is possible that Archippus, a son of Philemon, was a real leader in that church in Laodicea, as well as in Colossae since the churches were associated with one another in proximity.

So the church was founded during the same period of time as the others in the ministry of Paul in Ephesus. As we noted earlier, it got infected with a deadly heresy that misrepresented the deity of Jesus Christ. I think that's inherent in the title there and in the situation in the church--corrupt, unsaved, lost.

Sardis was dead but had a few living, worthy believers. Thyatira was compromising, sinful and idolatrous, but had some who held the truth. Laodicea was a church that was absolutely no church, it was tares without wheat. Somebody asked the question, "Well what about the messenger? Was he genuine?" Probably, probably was. It may well have been that a messenger had to be selected from somewhere else to take the letter, we don't know.

In each of these letters we've also come to a fourth point, the commendation. However, there is no commendation here so there's nothing to say. Verse 15 He says, "I know your deeds, period, and I've got no comment." There isn't anything to say to commend anything you do.

So that takes us to the condemnation. And the condemnation is very important, verses 15 and 16. "I know your deeds that you are neither cold nor hot. I would that you were cold or hot. So because you are lukewarm and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of My mouth." Whoa...strong language. I know your deeds. I know them intimately and I know them infallibly. I know your deeds. Just a footnote on that. Deeds always reveal what a person is...always. "By their fruits you shall know them." Romans 2 verses 6 to 8, Paul makes it as clear as anywhere in the Bible, "God will judge you on the basis of your deeds." "God will render to every man according to His deeds." "To those who by perseverance in doing good seek for glory and honor and immortality, He'll give eternal life. To those who are selfishly ambitious and don't obey the truth but obey unrighteousness, He'll bring wrath and indignation."

You say, "Wait a minute, I thought we were saved by grace and faith and all of that." That's right, we are. But whether we are saved or not shows up in our deeds. James says the same thing. Your faith is made known by your works.

So He says I know your deeds and therefore I know your heart. I can see by what you do what you are. That is a very important statement with sweeping implications in the New Testament. A person who is a Christian manifests it. A person who is not manifests it.

And then the statement, the most relentless, overpowering rebuke yet. And the rebuke says, basically, "I spit you out of My mouth because you're lukewarm." This takes us back to our comments about the water supply. In Hierapolis, six miles to the north, there was some famous springs, hot springs. In fact, they were one of the most well-known and popular places for healing. The water was hot and you went there and sat in that water and it had therapeutic power. It is still used today. Hierapolis had hot water and that hot water was therapeutic.

In Colossae, ten miles south and east, there was a cold stream. We learned that the stream was perennially running and perennially cold like typical water that flows from the high mountains. That water was thirst quenching. That water was famous because of its cool, clear character.

They didn't have the hot therapeutic water of Hierapolis and they didn't have the cold clear refreshing water of Colossae, they had the foul, dirty, tepid water that flowed for miles through an underground aqueduct. It wasn't hot and it wasn't cold. Not hot enough to relax and restore, not cool enough to refresh and quench. Laodicea couldn't provide the refreshment of Colossae, it couldn't provide the healing of Hierapolis. Its lukewarm water was absolutely useless. Any visitor who came there who wasn't used to the stuff would put it in his mouth and immediately emit it, spit it out.

And the word "lukewarm," chliaros, is simply a word for tepid water. One historian says, "The water supply of Laodicea was derived from an artificial pipeline, bringing water which was literally lukewarm and so impure as to have an emetic effect."

What is the spiritual significance of this? Simply that the Laodicean church made Christ vomit. It was a sickening church. Some churches make the Lord weep. Some churches make the Lord angry. This one made Him sick. Back in chapter 2 and also in chapter 3 we saw His anger toward some churches, Pergamos, Thyatira, Sardis. But here He's sickened.

Now how are we to interpret these three categories? What does cold mean? Well that's not too tough. Cold means spiritually cold, open outright rejection of Jesus Christ, repudiating the gospel. He says you're not cold, I mean, you're just not openly, outright, rebellious, rejecting Christ and repudiating Christianity.

But on the other hand, what does hot mean? Zealous, spiritually alive and awake and eager and fired up, as it were, for the Lord. He says you're not that either. You're not boiling for...with spiritual zeal for the Lord, nor are you openly outright cold.

There are many in the world who are completely cold to the things of Christ. The gospel leaves them absolutely unmoved. It arouses no spiritual response. They have no interest in Christianity, no interest in the church. They make no pretense. They certainly aren't hypocrites. They don't even go near things that have to do with Christ. They are lost and they could care less. They don't want to hear the Word of God at all.

On the other hand, believers are marked by a response to spiritual truth and they're zealous and they're fervent. And He's saying metaphorically, I can take it if you were like Hierapolis because then you'd be real. I could even take it if you were like the cold water of Colossae. That's better than being the foul water of Laodicea, lukewarm. Who are they? Professing Christians...go to church, claim to know the Lord, but aren't saved. They're content with self-righteous religion. They're hypocrites playing games. They're the kind of people described in Matthew 7 where Jesus says, "Many will say unto Me in that day, `Lord, Lord,' and I will say unto them, `Depart from Me, I never knew you. You may have done many works in My name and prophesied and cast out demons, but I don't know you.'"

They're like those in 2 Timothy 3:5 who have a form of godliness but without power. They're like the Jews in Romans 10 who have a zeal for God but not according to a true knowledge. They're just hypocrites touched someway by Christianity but not belonging to Christ. And there is something obnoxious about them. They nauseate Christ. They make Him sick.

There's much more hope, frankly, for one who has been untouched by the gospel. There's much more hope for one who has made no pretense of knowing Christ. Do you understand that? Than there is for the one who makes the pretense but his life illustrates that he's not really honored Christ at all. In fact, I would say there's no one farther from the truth in Christ than the one who makes an idle profession without real faith. He is really in Satan's hands. They had bought a satanic lie about Christ. They were in religion up to their neck. They called it Christianity. They said they were a church. Satan was in control.

In the history of the church and in my experience, no one has been harder to reach for Christ than a false Christian. Satisfied with the measure of his good works, satisfied with his attitude toward God and they sit in churches across the world. It would be easier to win a harlot, it would be easier to win a criminal, it would be easier to win an agnostic or an atheist, it's easier...Jesus certainly said...to reach the Publicans and the harlots than it is the Pharisees and the Sadducees. There's more hope for the salvation of an atheist than a spoiled half-hearted conceited hypocrite who thinks he knows the truth and pretends to accept it. Like the Pharisees, they don't feel their need. They have that lukewarmness of religion. They sense no chill. If they were cold enough to feel the bitterness and the severity of their sin, they would be more readily brought to the knowledge of Christ. But these conceited self-deceived hypocrites, this lukewarmness made Christ sick.

John Stott once wrote, "The Laodicean church was a half-hearted church. Perhaps none of the seven letters is more appropriate to the twentieth century church than this. It describes vividly the respectable, sentimental, nominal, skin-deep religiosity which is so wide spread among us today. Our Christianity is flabby and anemic, we appear to have taken a lukewarm bath."

This is a people who aren't saved. But it's not an outright rejection. It's not a repudiation. It's not a hostility toward the Lord Jesus outwardly. They probably named His name. But I submit to you that Jesus said, "I would rather have you cold than like this. I'd rather you be a prostitute than a Pharisee. I'd rather you be a sinner who knows his sin than a hypocrite who doesn't recognize it. I'd rather you be a Publican beating on your breast saying...God, be merciful to me, a sinner...who feels the coldness of his lostness than a Pharisee who says...I thank You that I'm not as other men." Anything is better than lukewarmness.

But there was even something worse than being lukewarm and that was their self-deception. Look at verse 17. Here's the second condemnation. "Because you say I am rich and have become wealthy and have need of nothing and you do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked." Look at that, first part of the..."Because you say." Do you remember the study we did in Matthew chapter 7 and we talked about the "if we sayers" and the "if we doers"? If we say...if we say...if we say, Jesus said doesn't mean anything. What matters is if we do, if we do, if we do. It's not the people who say, it's the people who do the will of My Father.

So here are the "if we sayers" again, the unregenerate religionists who want to name the name of God and the name of Christ and show you everything they've done and He says they're doing it again, they're saying...and here's what they're saying, "I am rich and have become wealthy and have need of nothing."

It reminds me of the rich young ruler, does it you? Matthew 19? As I told you, Laodicea was a very wealthy city. It had material wealth, it gave its people a false security. They were famous for that wealth and apparently the church thought it was wealthy, too.

You say, "Were they talking about money here?" No, no, I don't really think they were talking about money. I think they thought they were rich in spiritual reality. I think they thought they had spiritual riches. Let me go a step further. I think the heresy in Colossae was a form of incipient Gnosticism, a sort of a preview to what later became known as Gnosticism. And Gnosticism comes from the word gnosis which means "to know." In other words, there were people who believed that they had attained to the ascended knowledge. Christ was not enough for them. They had gone beyond Christ. Christ was just an emanation from God, an angelic being on a descending ladder of beings that go from good to bad. And He was somewhere up in the good category.

The gnostics said, "But we have ascended beyond the simplicity of Christ. Christ is only a part, a component. We have reached the ascended knowledge. We have gone beyond that. And that's why Paul in Colossians chapter 2 so explicitly says of Christ, "In Him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge and you are complete in Him and don't you let anybody spoil you through philosophy and empty deceit and think there's something more elevated than Christ." That same heresy had found its way over here, no doubt, and these people are saying, "We are the ascended ones." If this isn't the typical, hypocritical, liberal line. "All of you mindless fundamentalists. All of you people who just believe the simplicity of the Bible are not educated. You're not erudite. You haven't attained to the ascendent knowledge." We are anti-intellectual.

No, they had spiritual pride. They were rich. They had become spiritually wealthy. They had attained the ascended knowledge. They had gone past that simple belief about Christ that these uneducated and non-trained Christians believe. They think they're spiritually rich. So they said I am rich, that's their state, and have become wealthy, that's...that's the process to that state. They did it by themselves. I'm rich and guess who got me there? Me. And I have need of nothing. That's a self-righteous works system, isn't it? I've attained it all. I've reached the elevated level.

This is the hardest person to reach. The intellectual apostate, the intellectual unsaved hypocrite who stays in the church. Liberal churches flood our country, Europe, Canada, the world...full of people who think they have ascended beyond. They have an aberrant view of Christ. They see Him not as the creator God. They have an infatuation with their own intellect and assume that they have been elevated beyond the simplicity of fundamental truth. And they have developed a self-righteous work system that makes them think they are the spiritually elite who need absolutely nothing. And when you come with the simple gospel, they laugh.

These are the ones, by the way, in the words of Jesus, Matthew 7:13 and 14, who are on the broad road. It's a road of religion that says heaven but it ends up in hell. They're the ones who build their house on the sand in Matthew 7:24 to 27.

So He says to them, "You say...Ha...and you don't know." Boy, that's got to be a blast. You say you have all this spiritual stuff and you don't know anything. The truth is you are wretched and miserable. Why? Because you are poor and blind and naked. Whew...you are wretched, that's your state. You are miserable, that's your condition. Because you are poor and blind and naked.

Here we see it clearly. The lukewarm condition is lostness. It is the sickening condition of thinking you are spiritually rich when you're bankrupt, of thinking you are beautiful when you are wretched, of imagining you are to be envied when you are to be pitied, of believing you see clearly everything when you see nothing. You are stone blind...a feeling you are clothed in spiritual finery and you are stark naked. That's what He's saying. You've got it exactly opposite.

You may have a bank account in the spiritual bank, you may be wearing the shiny black wool, and you may have the eye salve, but you're poor, you are poor and you are blind and you are naked.

This is a person to be pitied. That's what it means, miserable and wretched. You have no riches. You have no clothes. You have no vision, no sight. Spiritually naked, spiritually blind, spiritually bankrupt. This is the message I would preach in a liberal church.

Verse 18 gives us the command, this is fascinating. Listen to this command. "I advise you to buy from me gold refined by fire that you may become rich and white garments that you may clothe yourself and that the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed and eye salve that you may anoint your eyes that you may see." Whew...now you see how the industry of that city comes into play? I advise you, I'm giving you some counsel. Isn't the Lord gracious? He says you make Me sick but My grace compels Me to give you an invitation.

He could have turned them into cinders by the breath of His mouth. But it's an invitation to a church full of hypocrites. And it reminds me that they still are worthy of an invitation, are they not? From a gracious God? He says you need to buy from Me.

Well you say, "Now wait a minute, what do you mean buy?" Well it's the same kind of buy as Isaiah 55 verse 1, you remember that wonderful chapter which is an evangelistic appeal. In Isaiah 55:1, let me just read it to you so you'll have it exactly as it was written. The call of God to the unregenerate sounds like this, "Oh everyone who thirsts come to the waters, you who have no money come, buy and eat." Did you get that? You who have no money, come buy and eat. So this is the kind of thing you can buy when you don't have anything. You come and buy it. You say, "Now wait a minute, if I don't have anything, what do I buy it with?" Are you ready for this? The only thing you have is...what?...your own wretched condition. So that's all you can offer.

So you come and you say I'll give You me for You, is that a deal? Jesus said that, what will a man give in exchange for his soul? What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world, can he give that in exchange for his soul? No. What can you give in exchange for your soul? Only yourself, that's what repentance is. I renounce myself, I yield myself, I give myself to You.

And He says, "I want you to buy three things. You give yourself to Me, that's the price, all that you are for all that I am, and first of all, I'll give you gold refined by fire that you may become rich." Pure gold refined by fire, no impurities. Ah, they thought they were rich in spiritual truth, they thought they were rich in spiritual reality, they thought they were transcendent, you know. They were bankrupt. He says I'll give you spiritual gold, I'll give you the spiritual riches, I'll give you what is pure and what is valuable and what is priceless. I'll endow you with such spiritual riches you never dreamed of. I'll give you a true and tested faith.

First Peter 1:7, "The proof of your faith is more precious than gold." What is the gold He's talking about? I think a real faith, a true faith. First Timothy 6:18, James 2:5 lend credence to that interpretation. I think He's saying come to Me and just give Me yourself and I'll give you a pure faith, a true faith, a proven faith that is priceless gold. What does that mean? A real relationship to Me, a genuine belief that affirms that you're a true Christian.

Then He says, "Buy white garments that you may clothe yourself." Get rid of those black ones. Get a white one. Back in Isaiah 61:10 Isaiah said that God wants to clothe us with the robe of His righteousness. We know in chapter 3 of Revelation verse 4 He said that people who walk with the Lord will walk with HIm in white for they are worthy. Over in Revelation 7:9 you see the saved multitude and they are in white robes. And over in chapter 19 verse 8 it says that she is clothed in fine linen, white or bright and clean and this fine linen is the righteousness of the saints. So He says I'll give you a true faith, a pure faith, a saving faith, a confident faith and then I will give you righteousness. I'll give you a righteous nature and I'll give you righteous acts.

And then He says I want you to get some eye salve to anoint your eyes so you can really see. You know what they used to do? There was some kind of a powder that they found, it's called in some history books "Phrygian Powder." And they knew that if they placed it on the eye it had a very soothing effect, a therapeutic effect, actually a medicinal effect. And so what they would do is they would put that powder in some coarse dough and then they would place that coarse dough on the eyes and somehow they would seal it so it remained there for a length of time. It brought healing and restoration to the eyes. And He says to them, in effect, "You think you see but you don't see. But if you come to Me I'll give you eye salve and you'll see."

Salvation is the gold that makes people spiritually rich in faith. Salvation is the white robe that covers our sinful nakedness. Salvation is the eye salve that gives us the knowledge of God and of His truth. What's He offering? An abiding faith, an abiding righteousness, an abiding understanding. You are poor, you are blind, you are naked. Let Me fix that.

All that comes together when the sinner offers the price which is himself and when he repents to follow Jesus Christ. Let's pray.

Father, we thank You for the wonder of this text. We thank You for its insightfulness for what we have learned, what we've seen. Thank You for the elucidation of this truth to help us understand churches around us all over the place that are like this Laodicean church, they make You sick, they make us sick. But even though they made You sick, You still were gracious and You said if you'll repent I'll make you rich, I'll clothe you and I'll give you sight.

Father, give us that same sickening feeling when we see those churches that have blasphemed the name of Christ, that have substituted false spiritual knowledge and that have developed a system of self-righteousness which makes them smug and self-satisfied. May we be nauseated by them. May we want nothing to do with them and yet may we have the compassion of Christ to call them out of their condition, to help them see their poverty and their nakedness and their blindness. It isn't easy for someone like that to be saved, better they were cold, better they were cold...but even so, we must faithfully call them to repentance. And may we do that as You give us opportunity. And may there be some people in churches like that who hear this message tonight or on tape or on the radio somewhere down the line when it's played, who in hearing come to truth and in giving themselves as the purchase price they are given in return gold, a white garment and eye salve. Be gracious, Lord, to many caught in Laodicean churches. For Your own glory we pray. Amen.

Laodicea: The Lukewarm Church Part 2

Laodicea – Part 2

As we continue with a second sermon on the Church of Laodicea by John MacArthur, let’s stop and think about a couple of things mentioned in these verses in Revelation Chapter 3 from God’s perspective.

We like to think that worldly power and wealth are noble objectives. The world tells us that these are worthy goals and we hear this everyday on television, on the radio, in newspapers, in bestselling books and on the Internet. If we examine these pursuits in the light of God’s Word, we see just how empty they really are. Can your bank account tear down demonic strongholds? Will the latest management trends protect you against the evil one? Will your worldly power destroy Satan’s works? Does the size of your house or the car you drive have any bearing on your spiritual growth?

We like to tell ourselves that if we make more money and gain more worldly power we’ll be able to do more good things in the world. The truth is that by focusing on the world and our own selfish pursuits, we have less and less time for God and His will for us. As we make more money and gain more power, we end up spending a larger percentage on ourselves and we spend less time with those that we love.

We can always ‘justify’ worldly pursuits. We can always explain away the downside of our pursuits – less time with our families, less time reading the Bible, less time to spend with God, more stress. Instead of being set free, we travel down a path that leads to ever more bondage. Never forget – the devil is very deceptive and he’s always lurking – looking for ways to get at you.

The truth is that Satan has offered many of us in the church today worldly wealth and power in exchange for our eternal salvation – and we have gladly accepted. We like to think that we have it all figured out – when we have nothing. We’re very religious, very righteous, we know everything – but we don’t know Jesus Christ. It hurts to hear this doesn’t it? It’s the truth – and as we’ve learned in earlier posts, the truth can be very difficult to accept when we don’t want to believe it.

The description of Laodicea was added for us, for this period of time. Right here, right now. Don’t look around at everyone else for the problem. Look at yourself. Each one of us must examine our spiritual lives. When I would hear a sermon about being spiritually lukewarm – I would instinctively think about the person on my left or right. It couldn’t be directed to me – I’m saved, I’m righteous – and I forgot that Jesus didn’t come to us to save the righteous, but to save repentant sinners. The truth was that God was speaking directly to me and I chose not to listen. Why listen to Jesus Christ when I have it all figured out? Someone else must be convicted by this – not me. I now know how truly deceived I was. I now know how pathetic my spiritual life was. I now know what true repentance is. I know that I don’t need anything the world offers me – because it offers me nothing of eternal value. I now know that all I need in this world is a relationship with Jesus Christ. Will He give me wealth to help build His kingdom? It’s possible. Can the Lord give authority to those He chooses in this world to do His will on earth? Absolutely. The difference for me now is that Jesus comes first. If He blesses me, I’m grateful and I will pray for His will for what has been given and my focus remains on Him. If I experience hardship in this world, I know there are reasons and I will pray for knowledge and understanding and my focus remains on Him. The foundation of my life is Jesus Christ and because I have been set free by the Truth - when the storms of this world slam against my house, it will not fall.

Imagine what we could do if Churches the world over actually followed Jesus Christ. Imagine what would happen if we truly accepted Jesus’ offer for redemption and purchased white clothes to wear and salve for our eyes so that we could see. Imagine if we allowed the Lord to strengthen our spiritual gifts and the world could see miraculous healings. Imagine if we allowed the Lord to strengthen us and the world was given Divine revelations through His prophets. Imagine a world of spiritual warriors standing against our spiritual enemy. Warriors not afraid of our enemy or anything else in this world – ready to give everything they have to God, His Kingdom and His Glory. This is the church as it was meant to be. A church with real power from God delivering the Truth to the lost. This is what Satan fears most – which is why he tries so hard to keep us focused on the world and away from our true calling.

Let’s continue with a second sermon on the Church of Laodicea by John MacArthur:

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Laodicea: The Lukewarm Church, Pt. 2
Revelation 3:19-22

Open your Bible to Revelation chapter 3 and we will look again at our text, verses 14 to 22, the final of the seven letters to the churches in Asia Minor, namely the letter to the church at Laodicea. This is, as you remember, part 2 in our look since a couple of weeks ago we went through the major portion of the text.

By way of introduction, let me just remind you of a perspective that may help you get a grip on the nature of this letter. One of the most heart-moving passages in Scripture is found in the tenth chapter of Paul's letter to the Romans because it gets us in touch with Paul's own heart. In Romans 10:1 it says, "Brethren, my heart's desire and my prayer to God for them," that is for Israel, "is for their salvation. For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God but not in accordance with knowledge."

Paul is saying that his heart prayer, his deep-felt concern and desire is for the salvation of Israel. He grieves over their lostness to the point where he will even say that he could almost wish himself accursed if he could be damned in their place. He was heart-broken over Israel. He was as heart broken, I suppose, in some way as Jesus was when He wept over the city of Jerusalem and said, "How oft I would have gathered you but you would not."

And what broke the heart of Jesus and what broke the heart of Paul over Israel was the fact that they were the recipients of such great spiritual privilege. They had such tremendous opportunity. The Jews were religious. They had been given the scriptures and the promises and the covenants and the prophets and the priests. And with all of that privilege they were doomed to hell. They had been given the Scripture but refused to believe it. They had been given the covenants but refused to keep them. They had been given the prophets but killed them.

And what makes the story so sad is the privileged position that they occupied. Because of that their case is more tragic than the case of others. God had, you remember, chosen them out of all the world's peoples. And God had set His love upon them, His affection and then granted them this immense spiritual privilege culminating even in the Messiah. But as they had rejected the Word and as they had stoned the prophets, so they killed the Messiah. And so, says Paul, my heart's desire, my prayer, my deepest concern is for the salvation of Israel because of their tremendous privilege.

They were zealous for God, he says. They were sincere but not according to knowledge. The problem wasn't that they lacked sincerity, the problem wasn't that they lacked a zeal or a religious interest or a pursuit of God, the problem was they devised their own means to do that and rejected the truth. They were religious and damned.

We look back on the story of Israel and we affirm its great tragic nature. We understand why Jesus felt the way He did. After all, the promises of the Old Testament to this people, the Messiah finally comes and they kill Him. So we look with Paul, I think, and Jesus on the story of Israel as a supreme tragedy. And in fact even today, I think, the evangelical church of Jesus Christ has an unusual compassion for Jewish people in wanting to see them come to the true knowledge of their Messiah.

That great tragedy has a parallel today, another tragedy not unlike that one exists. It is a story of an equal kind of tragedy. It is a cause, I believe, for an equal kind of heartache, an equal kind of concern and an equal kind of prayer. And it is the lostness of the church...the lostness of the church. Today within the church there is a lost population of people. Religious, yes. Having in their hands the New Testament, having in their hands all the information they need about the New Covenant, holding in their hands in the very scriptures the truth about Christ, the saving truth about Christ, His death, His resurrection. They have the understanding that God has given in the Scripture of saving faith and repentance. They have the truth about sin and eternal destiny. Many of those churches have sincere people, very religious, zealous people but they are doomed just as Israel was.

They have the Scripture. They have the gospel. They have the truth about Christ. They have the source of all necessary teaching for life and eternity. And they are very busy being religious, but they reject the truth. They have Bibles they don't believe or obey.

And may I suggest to you something you probably never thought about? There are more people today doomed in the church than there were doomed in an apostate Israel. The Jewish people were small in number. The apostate church is huge, all over the world, millions of people are in it. And they too deny Christ, deny the Word of God, follow false teachers, follow liars, follow the agents of Satan disguised as angels of light. And our hearts should be as grieved over the lost in the doomed church as was Paul's over the lost in a doomed Israel. For they and the church have had a great heritage. When you stop to realize that anybody today who is in the church in its widest sense, the Christian church, if you take them back to their heritage are a part of an organization founded by Jesus Christ, sustained by faithful men and women, perpetuated by the blood of martyrs, enlightened by the skill of great scholars and so they are among a very elite group that are the spiritually privileged in the world. And yet masses of humanity exist within the framework of the church who are in unbelief, that do not know the truth. Very zealous, religious, religiously active, but like Israel they seek to please God by their works. They go about to establish their own righteousness. Many of them deny the deity of Jesus Christ as the Jews did. Many of them refuse to acknowledge the depth of their sin and iniquity. And many of them will refuse to understand the utter inability they have to meet God's holy standard.

Apostate Israel was Paul's greatest grief. The apostate church is mine. Laodicea is an illustration of the apostate church. The last of the seven churches addressed by the Lord Jesus and the worst. Out of the seven there were two good churches, Smyrna and Philadelphia, and the Lord doesn't say anything negative to them. There were five bad churches. Five of them were tainted by sin to one degree or another. And as you go through the five, Ephesus, Pergamos, Thyatira, Sardis, Laodicea, they get progressively worse until finally Laodicea is fully apostate.

You remember the church at Ephesus had left its first love. Then the church at Pergamos tolerated sin. Then the church at Thyatira had engaged in full-blown compromise with evil. Then the church at Sardis was dead. And now the Laodicean church, unsaved and doomed. This is the apostate church.

But I believe that our attitude toward the apostate church needs to be the same as the attitude of the Apostle Paul toward apostate Israel, the attitude, if you will, of the Lord Jesus toward apostate Israel. And that is a certain attitude of sadness and sorrow for the letter to the church at Laodicea is the only one of the seven letters in which Christ has absolutely nothing good to say. Apparently there wasn't even a contingent that was significant enough, a contingent of saved people, to make a comment to them. And so like churches all over the world, this was a religious group, positive on religion, sincere in their efforts to please God by their own works, but doomed.

Now what I want you to learn as we look at this letter tonight is the Lord's attitude toward the apostate church because it needs to be our attitude as well. And it is not an attitude of standing back and condemning only, there is an element of compassion here. And we will see that as we look at verses 19 and following.

But before we get to that, you remember that the correspondent is identified, the Lord Jesus, in verse 14 as the amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God. The amen simply affirms truth. Jesus Christ is the amen who affirms all of God's promises. He is called the faithful and true witness because He is perfectly accurate and completely trustworthy. He is called the beginning of the creation of God, that simply means He is the beginner, the originator, the initiator or the creator Himself.

So the Lord who writes is the amen. That in the Old Testament is a term used for God Himself. He is the one who affirms all that God has promised. He is the faithful true witness. He is the creator of all creation. And He writes to this church.

Now we noted last time the city, the city of Laodicea. This city, we made a couple of key notes about it, had a water supply that was brought in in aqueducts and so the water supply was putrid and dirty, the aqueducts had become clogged. The water was foul and tepid and that comes into play later in the letter.

They also were a center for commercial enterprise. And they had three components to that, as you remember, a banking center, a wool industry in which they produced black wool, and a medical school which was famous for its eye salve.

The third thing we note in each of these letters is the church. We don't have any record of the founding of the church in Laodicea. We assume that it was hit by the same heresy that hit the church at Colossae. It was one of three churches in the Lycus valley, Hierapolis, Laodicea and Colossae. And probably had been hit with the same heresy that was denying the deity of Christ. Only Colossae fought it off, apparently Laodicea just bought into it. They were deniers of the person and work of Christ to the degree that they were an unsaved bunch of apostates. We could easily call them the liberal church of the time.

As far as the fourth point, we always look at a commendation but there isn't any here so there's nothing to say. And then comes the condemnation in verses 15 and 16. He says, "I know your deeds, your neither cold nor hot, I wish you were cold or hot. So because you're lukewarm and neither hot or cold, I will vomit you out of My mouth."

In Hierapolis there were hot springs. The hot water of Hierapolis was tremendous as a therapeutic aid. People would go to Hierapolis and sit in the hot water for its healing properties. In Colossae there was a clear, cold, refreshing stream and you could be refreshed wonderfully in the cold water of Colossae. So Hierapolis had hot springs with therapeutic value, Colossae had cold spring water, fresh and clear to quench your thirst. But all they had in Laodicea was tepid, filthy dirty, foul water coming through the aqueduct that couldn't restore you or refresh you. And the church was a lot like that and they made Christ sick.

Some churches make Him angry. This church made Him sick. Cold speaks of spiritual coldness, spiritual indifference. Hot speaks of saved. So you have the spiritually indifferent and the saved. And He says I'd rather deal with either of you. I'd rather deal with those people who are cold and dead and lifeless and spiritually indifferent, or those people who are saved than to deal with sincerely religious people who are content with their own self-made theology. As I said a couple of weeks ago, it's easier to lead an outright, abject pagan to the gospel than a religious person. He says I wish you were hot or cold. If you were hot, obviously I'd prefer that. If you were cold, I'd even prefer that as a second choice. But you make Me sick because you're in the middle. They're not saved but they're religious. And that's a sickening condition.

Not only that, in verse 17 He says you're deceived. You think you're rich, you think you're wealthy, you think you don't need anything, and you have no idea that you're wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked. You're deluded.

You see how like the Jews the apostate church is? You can take that Scripture and easily impose it on the Pharisees, couldn't you? On the Jewish leaders who thought they were rich and wealthy in spiritual things and didn't need anything and didn't know they were wretched, miserable, poor, blind and naked. That is a marvelous description of the religious and lost person. Those people who are caught in these churches that deny gospel truth or deny the deity of Christ, or deny the veracity, inerrancy and authority of the Word of God who come up with their man-made religion under the name of Christianity, they think they're erudite, they think they're academic, they think they're well trained, they think they're very religious. And they don't know that they are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked. And so they are in the same condition as apostate Israel. They sicken the Lord and they are self-deceived.

Then in verses 18 to 20 we noted the command...the command. In verse 18, "I advise you to buy from Me gold refined by fire that you may become rich and white garments that you may clothe yourself and that the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed and eye salve to anoint your eyes that you may see."

In other words, you need to remedy your situation. And He tells them to do three things. To buy these things, and of course you purchase them by faith, not by works, I want you to buy gold, that's true spiritual wealth because you don't have any. I want you to buy white clothes, the garment of righteousness. And I want you to buy eye salve to anoint your eyes. And there you can see Him playing off the situation that was well known in the city of Laodicea. They had a great banking center, He says I want you to go for spiritual riches. They were famous for black wool, He says I want you to go for white garments of righteousness. And they had a medical center that produced eye salve to give physical healing to the eyes, and He said I want you to put on eye salve that will give you spiritual understanding. He said I want you to purchase faith and righteousness and wisdom...all come to the believing sinner who pays the price of self-denying repentance and faith. And so, He says to them you need to remedy your disastrous situation.

Then in verse 19 we pick it up where we left off. This is a direct appeal and this tells us now what our attitude is to be toward the apostate church. "Those whom I love I reprove and discipline. Be zealous therefore and repent."

This is not an easy verse to interpret. Some people on the surface immediately think He has to be talking to believers because He says "those whom I love." Not necessarily so because if I remember my Bible right, one of the first verses I ever learned was John 3:16 and John 3:16 says, quote it with me, "God so loved the world."

The context here in verse 18 indicates that these people needed the gold of true spiritual riches. They needed the garment of true righteousness. And they needed the sight of true spiritual understanding. That tells me they weren't converted. Verse 20 tells me that Christ is still on the outside trying to get in. So we must assume then in verse 19 that these are not believers, but God loves the world.

And I think there's a sense in which because these people have outwardly identified with the church, outwardly identified with the Kingdom which has grown to be so massive that it includes the true and the false, as some of the parables of Matthew 13 indicate that it would, but the very fact that they go around naming the name of Christ and outwardly identifying with His church puts them in the unique sphere of His concern.

So, He says those whom I love I reprove and discipline. Could He be here referring to unbelievers? Yes. Reprove is the word that means to treat with contempt. It's used that way in many extrabiblical sources. In Matthew 18:15 it is the word to convict. In Ephesians 5:11 it means to expose. So He is saying I love the world and I love the world enough to expose the sin of the world, to convict, to bring reproof and judgment. Frankly, it's nothing more than a general term for God's action toward sinners. You can compare its use in John 3:20, 1 Corinthians 14:24.

And then the word "discipline" is used also in Luke 23 twice, once in verse 16 and again in verse 22. And there in its uses, it's very important to point out, it means flatly to punish, to punish. And that's how it's translated.

In 2 Timothy 2:25 it is used again of a form of punishment that is wrought against unbelievers. It's translated "correcting those who are in opposition so that they may come to salvation." God will reprove or treat with contempt the unsaved. He will punish the unsaved, even though He loves them. "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, but to those who do not believe, He brings condemnation and punishment."

And so it is not wrong to see this as a verse referring to unbelievers. In fact, it makes very good sense. I love you...He's saying. And there's a note of compassion and tenderness there. "And those whom I love I will convict, I will expose to judgment, I will punish." And He is referring here not only to a convicting work which leads to salvation in some cases, but to an ultimate punishment which leads to damnation. It's just a very general expression. Don't think because I'm a loving God I'm not going to punish you. Don't think that because I'm a loving God I'm not going to treat you with contempt. I will. God does not desire to do that, He has no pleasure in the death of the wicked.

So there's a note of tenderness in these words, as there is in this whole letter. The Lord is showing tender affection for an unsaved church. The word "love" here, by the way, is not agape, agapao, it's not that supreme word for love, it's the word phileo, and it's the word that translates into affection. I have a tender affection for the unsaved, but I will punish and I will judge. There is affection from God even toward the apostates, those who are caught in heresy, those who are in the false church. But there's no relationship. It's not the relationship of love, it's not the supreme relationship. He says I have an affection for you, but you are on the edge of conviction, exposure and judgment.

So in the light of that He says, "Be zealous therefore and repent." I appreciate your religious zeal, I appreciate your religious activity, but be zealous therefore and repent. Please note that call to salvation is a very familiar one. There is no salvation without repentance. This repentance is to come in one decisive act prompted by the direction of the zeal. Once you understand that even though God has affection for the sinner, the sinner realizes he's on the brink of judgment, he's going to redirect his zeal toward repentance, lest he feel the judgment of God. If you're going to be zealous and if you're going to be sincere, He says, let it be in the pursuit of repentance.

The salvation call always, always includes repentance. Jesus called for repentance as John the Baptist before Him had. Paul preaches repentance, Acts 11:18, Acts 20. James in chapter 4 verses 6 to 10 demands a repentance, a turning from sin, a cleansing of the life. That is the very essence of a saving zeal, a saving faith. Luke 16:16, the law and the prophets were proclaimed until John. Since then the gospel of the Kingdom of God is preached and everyone is forcing his way into it. The point he's making there is it is not easy to come into the Kingdom of God, it is not easy, it is a tremendous struggle, it is a battle and a warfare. Why? Because it demands genuine repentance. Repentance means that you realize you're guilty, you realize your a vile sinner in the presence of God. You realize that though God has affection for you and He loves you as He loves the whole world, you're on the brief of judgment. You realize that you deserve that judgment, that wrath, that punishment. You're hell bound. You realize the cause of this is your sin. You realize that you can't remedy that. And so you turn from it.

It's not easy to do that. It's a great struggle. But the message to the lukewarm unsaved church is be zealous and repent, turn your zeal and your sincerity in the pursuit of repentance.

There is an invitation here that indicates that the Lord's attitude toward the apostate church is not one of indifference. He says you're part of the world I love but you're part of those I'm going to damn unless you repent.

He goes a step further in a tender invitation in verse 20. He uses the exclamation, "Behold," because this is indeed a startling reality. You'd think He'd say, "Behold, I stand at the door ready to come in and destroy you. I reject you, I offer you nothing, you apostates." That's not His attitude. "Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door I'll come in to him and will dine with him and he with Me."

Since I was a little boy I've heard this verse used over and over and over again in evangelistic sermons, in tracts. I've even seen pictures painted showing Christ knocking on the door of the heart. May I be so forthright and bold as to stick my neck out a little bit and say to you, I don't believe He's talking about the heart? What door is He knocking on? The door of what? The church. That's obvious. Christ wants in His own church, the church that bears His name. Let Me in. He's outside His church and He wants to come in.

There's so many churches like that. They're up and down Roscoe Boulevard. They're all over the place. And He's outside. These are churches that even Jesus Christ isn't welcome to enter. He says I stand at the door of your church and I'm knocking, I want to come in. You're supposed to be the church, why do you shut Me out? I want you in Laodicea to repent and therefore open the door and let Me in your church.

The knocking is this letter. This letter is the knocking. This command in verses 18, 19 and 20, this essential statement, "Do this, repent, let Me in," that's the knocking. I stand at the door of your church and I knock. If anyone hears My voice. He's saying is there anybody in the church?

You can imagine the guy reading that letter to the church the day he arrived. Is there anybody here who will open the door? Do you know something? It only takes one Christian in a church and Christ is there. Right? You take an apostate church, one person in that church who believes and I'll be there. What that tells me about the Laodicean church is that there's every reason to conclude there wasn't a Christian in the place. Won't somebody let Me in? It just takes one believer in a church and Christ is there.

The invitation is a personal one. So He says if anyone hears My voice, hears Me knocking and the knock says repent, repent, repent, repent from your unbelief and your self-righteousness and your sin, if just anyone hears My voice and assesses their true spiritual condition and opens the door, repents, exercises saving faith that rejects works righteousness, that recognizes bankruptcy, nakedness, blindness, that abandons self-effort and turns from sin to Christ, if just one person does that I'll be in that church and then it will be like the church at Sardis where there were only a few. If just anybody will open the door, He says I'll come into him. I'll enter My church in that individual. Save that individual, take up residency in that individual and I'll be there in that church.

That spells hope for that church, doesn't it? And He says I'll come into him, will dine with him and he with Me. Dine, interesting. Dining was always the point of fellowship. It's just another way of saying I'll have communion, I'll have fellowship, we'll sit down, we'll be friends, we'll talk, we'll share life, we'll share joy. We'll be close, we'll have affection and love and intimacy. See a shared meal in ancient times in the east, a shared meal was a symbol of union in loving fellowship. The word here, dine, is deipnon and it refers to the evening meal, the last meal of the day before night falls. And Jesus is saying...Look, if just somebody will repent I'll come in and I'll save you and I'll have fellowship with you before the night of judgment falls.

What does He mean when He says I'll dine with you? I think He's talking about fellowship. I think He may also be anticipating the Marriage Supper of the Lamb to follow, indicated in Revelation 19:9. He may also be indicating the future Kingdom where we will eat with Him, Luke 22 lays that beautiful picture out. We're going to dine with Him at the Marriage Supper, we're going to dine with Him in the Kingdom, we're even going to eat with Him in eternity as Revelation describes heaven as having trees which bear fruit.

But I think it starts with fellowship now. He says I'll come in and we'll start having fellowship and it will go on forever in different forms. But let Me in for the last meal before the night falls. That's His invitation. And I just remind you that you're going to face a lot of folks in churches like this, as I do, and the Lord is still knocking on the door of sickening, lukewarm, unsaved, apostate, heretical churches and He just wants somebody to let Him in.

I've been mentioning to you that I was at Southeastern Seminary in Raleigh, North Carolina, the most liberal of all Southern Baptist Seminaries up until about four years ago. They would have denied, of course, the inerrancy of Scripture. They're still a number of faculty there that do. They would have rejected and been considered as apostates.

On the faculty was a woman by the name of Lindeman(?). She had written a number of books. These books were critical books that denied the authorship of Scripture. They attacked the Scripture. She was a formidable writer of liberal persuasion and her books led many people astray. They were books that denied the scriptures, all in the name of academic Christianity.

Then something amazing happened. Just a few years ago she got saved. She was delivered from scholastic night into biblical day. And a reporter came to her and said, "We understand you've become an evangelical Christian and been born again."
She said, "That is right."

The reporter said, "Well what would you suggest we do with all your books?"
To which she replied, "The same thing I've done with them. Throw them away, they're worthless."

Transformation. The Lord was knocking at an apostate church and one who espoused that apostasy prolifically who taught in a seminary and wrote books was saved and the door was open and the Lord came in.

We can become so hostile toward liberalism and neoorthodoxy and apostasy and false teachers whatever they're in, wherever churches are that are filled with error and illusion and deception. We can become so hostile that we lose our perspective. And so the Lord says, "I know the condition of the church is wretched. It makes me sick, so sick I want to vomit but still My heart cries out for their salvation, even as it did over the city of Jerusalem and the apostasy of Israel." Even as Paul who had his heart's desire for the salvation of an apostate Israel.

We take a strong stand on the truth but we don't ever want to be lacking in compassion, do we? Because God in His wonderful mercy and grace can save some of these deceived people. As long as they are not those who with a full understanding have totally rejected and become those unredeemable apostates that are described in Matthew chapter 12 and Hebrews chapter 6. These churches that are steeped in error are filled with people who are still redeemable. And so we come against that church, on the one hand, exposing its heresy. And on the other hand, knocking, as it were, in the behalf of Christ in calling those people to salvation.

And so, the Lord shows us in this command to this church how we are to regard those who are in error in the church. Not just to attack, but to invite, to call them to repentance because God loves them and they stand on the brink of His judgment to plead with them to let Christ in.

Then the final promise, we call it the counsel. Verse 21, "He who overcomes," who is that? The believer, right? First
John 5:5, we have said that in every case. He who overcomes is the believer. "I'll grant to him to sit down with Me on My throne as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne."

What is He saying? If you let Me in I'll not only have fellowship with you now, and at the Marriage Supper, and in the Kingdom, and throughout eternity, but here's another thing, I'll grant you a place with Me on My throne as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne. I tell you, that's getting elevated. I'll lift you up to sit with Me in the heavenlies. That's absolutely amazing and frankly astounding statement. He doesn't say I'll let you in My heaven and you can run around on the fringes. He says I'll take you to the throne and I'll seat you there. Jesus said in Matthew 19:28, "Truly I say to you that you who have followed Me in the regeneration when the Son of Man will sit on His glorious throne, you shall also sit upon twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel." He says to the disciples, some day you're going to have your thrones.

In Luke 22 verses 29 and 30, "Just as My Father granted Me a Kingdom, I grant you that you may eat and drink at My table in My Kingdom and you will sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel." Again He says to the disciples, you're going to be up there, you're going to be at My table, you're going to be sitting on thrones. And now He even goes beyond that, you're not only going to have thrones but I'm going to lift you up, you who believe, and I'm going to put you down on My throne and My throne is the same as the Father's throne.

Now what does that mean? I mean, is He just talking about a literal seat where we're all piled up? No, He's saying you're going to judge the world, you're going to sit with Me and have authority and rule and reign. The Lord has a throne. And we're going to be with Him in it. We're going to sit there, kings, chapter 1 verse 6, and priests and we're going to reign with Him on His own throne. What a tremendous promise.

The supreme dignity imaginable that I, this humble worthless sinner, would sit with Christ in His throne which is the Father's throne. Absolutely unbelievable. When God says He will exalt you, that's exactly what He means.

And then in verse 22, He closes as He always does. "He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches." And all I can say is who wouldn't want to listen to this?

Here's an apostate church, easy to damn, condemn. You see some people caught in heresy and you can have an attitude of animosity, hostility. Not right. We confront their error, we preach the truth, we warn them about judgment, but we have the heart of God toward them, we love them, we have an affection for them, we warn them about coming judgment, we plead with them to repent. We stand at the door of that church and we knock and we plead in behalf of Christ that they would open and let the Savior in and fellowship with Him. And if they'll do that, He will identify Himself with them, not only in time but in eternity. And there He will take them to His Father's throne.

So we are called then to be compassionate toward the Laodicean church because of their immense need. We're right back where we started. Paul confronted an apostate Israel. He hated their apostasy. And he, more than any other New Testament writer except Jesus Christ Himself, blasts an apostate Israel. If you want to get in touch with that, just read Romans 2 and then read Romans 3 and see how he condemns that. Read the book of Galatians and see how he condemns their self-righteous works system. No one was more powerful, more confrontive, more condemning of false teaching than Paul, particularly in the church. And the letters that he wrote directed themselves so often at false teaching in the church, heresy, misrepresentations of Christ in Scripture. But Paul's heart was also broken over Israel and grieved over the church because they both had had such immense spiritual privilege.

And here we see the Lord Jesus Himself who has every right to damn and condemn the apostate church, still graciously, tenderly knocking and calling to repentance. And that should be our attitude as well.

Well in our day, all seven of these churches are represented. And each of them poses its own challenge. There are pure churches like Smyrna and Philadelphia. There are churches that have left their first love and need the fire of devotion back. There are churches like Pergamos that have tolerated sin and won't deal with it. They are beginning to escalate and to grow in our day...they don't want to deal with sin. They don't want to confront iniquity. There are churches like Thyatira that are in full-blown compromise with the world. There are churches like Sardis that are mostly dead and only a few believers left. And there are the apostate churches. But in every case, the Lord says to these churches with all their defects, "Please repent, please take the steps necessary to make it right."

The Lord loves to that level and continually calls His church to purity, to holiness. That should be our challenge as well.

Father, thank You for our time in Your Word tonight. We ask that You would confirm to our hearts the role that we might play as individuals in bringing to pass the application of this truth. Help us while hating error to love those that are trapped in it and to compassionately call them to repentance. I thank You, Lord, that You're still knocking on churches we might give up on and asking if there isn't someone who would let You in. Use us, Lord, to reach people in those churches so they'll open the door and who knows how Your grace may spread? To that end we pray, for Christ's sake. Amen.