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Sunday 11/08/26
Title: Examining our lives in their light – Part 5
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Examining our lives in their light – Part 5
7th letter – To the saints of Laodicea
Revelation 3:14-22,
“(14) To the angel of the church in Laodicea write:
“The Amen, the faithful and true Witness, the Originator of God’s creation says:
(15) I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were cold or hot. (16) So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I am going to vomit you out of My mouth.
(17) Because you say, ‘I’m rich; I have become wealthy, and need nothing,’ and you don’t know that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked, (18) I advise you to buy from Me gold refined in the fire so that you may be rich, and white clothes so that you may be dressed and your shameful nakedness not be exposed, and ointment to spread on your eyes so that you may see.
(19) As many as I love, I rebuke and discipline. So be committed and repent.
(20) Listen! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and have dinner with him, and he with Me.
(21) The victor: I will give him the right to sit with Me on My throne, just as I also won the victory and sat down with My Father on His throne.
(22) “Anyone who has an ear should listen to what the Spirit says to the churches.”
Jesus presents Himself as the faithful and true Witness, and the instigator of all the creation of God standing preeminent over it all and being the One from Whom it came.
He sees them as a spiritual mirror to their society. Laodicea was self-everything…
Self-important, self reliant, self supportive, self-sufficient
Jesus looking at His bride in this city sees them quite differently than their culture. They are in fact wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked.
He called them lukewarm. We have concluded that cold and hot were not necessarily bad qualities, but even if they were – lukewarm was worse.
Traditionally this is understood as Jesus saying, “You’re not passionate about God, but you’re not stone cold either – you’re vacillating in the middle.”
Perhaps He was really saying, “You are neither hot enough to be useful, nor cold enough to be refreshing – you are a nauseating Lukewarm”.
The default understanding is that this is referring to water, and it may be, but not for the reasons most people say it was.
In the end it doesn’t matter because the hot, cold and lukewarm were illustrative and we are given the cypher by the next words being,
“BECAUSE you say, ‘I’m rich; I have become wealthy, and need nothing,’ and you don’t know that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked.”
There is what they believed was true, and then what was true in reality.
As cure to this He counsels them to obtain godliness and righteousness from Him as well as the ability to see their condition as He does. To rightly estimate themselves in relation to Him rather than through identification with their culture.
He then says something unexpected, “As many as I love, I rebuke and discipline. So be committed and repent”.
It isn’t so much the love, the rebuke, the discipline or the call to be committed and repent as it is the TYPE of love Jesus was talking about. As overarchingly important as agape love is, it has become the de facto understood Christian love – so much so that it is expected. But Jesus here claims to possess a deep,affection for them that is rooted in friendship.
THIS is all the more unexpected in that they were NOT meeting the requirements for being His friend.
Jesus Himself had said, “If you love Me you will keep My word”. These had clearly not kept His word or there would be no rebuke, no discipline nor any call to be committed and repent.
And perhaps the difference is that this is not saying they are His friends, but that they were His and that this cannot be divorced from the fact that they are joined together as bride and groom seems obvious enough. But it is unexpected and it sets the stage for the type of communion He offers.
The cure to this spiritual poverty is to open their hearts wide to Him and to permit the fellowship of equals.
This is not to say that Jesus as Creator God and Lord of the Kingdom as well as Savior and intercessor is not many times their senior in all aspects but Jesus had presented Himself to these saints as their loving friend, and it is as a friend He comes to knock on their door, call out and if invited in. commits to dining with them and they with Him.
This is in stark contrast to other places in Scripture where the servant serves the master of the meal before they are allowed to sit in a separate room and eat themselves. Or where Jesus served the disciples at the seder meal.
No, here the emphasis, though silent, is a meal of equals.
Now, much could be said in regard to the type of meal but unfortunately the wording would require more speculation than the text allows.
It WAS the chief meal of the day and it was traditionally one in which people in Rome reclined and spent time connecting with one another. That much is certain. It was NOT a rushed or hurried affair and it was the type of meal Jews were not permitted under the law to have with non-Jews.
While it could represent a covenant meal there’s nothing in the text that implies that so it would not be responsible with the text to force that claim.
Additionally these are not non-believers inviting Jesus into their heart; these are true believers returning to a place of shared fellowship or koinonia with Jesus. This Fellowship over a long casual meal is presented as the goal of Jesus and I don’t believe it’s reading too much into the text to also see it as the Cure for their lukewarmness. And that is where I feel the brunt of the lesson of this letter stands.
Nothing in this letter implies gross sin or religious negligence in terms of external works.
Most of this strikes much more like the condition Israel was in when they were externally obeying everything God told them to do and were therefore feeling pretty self-satisfied with who they were and their own religious status when God’s perception was one of being nauseated by their deeds.
He called on them to stop their sacred feast and quit their singing because they were obnoxious to Him.
He clearly stated that He now hated their sacred Feasts – not because He hadn’t been the One Who sponsored or initiated them, but because their participation had become entirely mechanical.
They drew near Him with their lips and their mouths but their hearts were far from Him and I think that strikes the hammer to the Anvil of what this letter was addressing.
This was the arena of their life in which they needed to overcome.
I find this a very, very sobering spiritual splash of ice cold water.
One usually thinks of sins whether small little speed bumps we find ourselves less diligent about or more obvious and gross sins as those things which need overcoming.
Perhaps this is the weight mentioned in Hebrew 12, as opposed to the sin, that does so easily thwart our progress.
Because this is nothing more than a loss of fervency.
They weren’t so cold as to abstain from all expressions of Christian worship and Christ centered living. Neither were they so hot in the pursuit of things outside of Christ as to be pagan in lifestyle.
Rather they were self-satisfied with a sleepy and mediocre faith, a casual connection to Christ and a comfortable, relaxed life. These, I’ll admit, are mere inferences to their wealth and belief that they needed nothing they didn’t already have, but I think it is a solid connection nonetheless.
This was a passionless marriage. Everybody was still wearing their rings. Nobody was running around on the other person. They made sure their feet were in their own home at the close of each day and that they slept dutifully beside their mate at night but there was no driving force to go seek Jesus in His Purity and His Beauty. Had they done this, the self-satisfaction of the possessions of this world or the external entrapments of religion would never have satisfied them.
In many ways this church seems to be a side-by-side comparison with Ephesus except the difference probably lies in the deliberate nature of the Ephesian church not allowing themself to get caught up in passion for fear that they could get swayed from sound Doctrine in the exhilaration and excitement of their love for Christ.
Whereas this Church of the Laodiceans were very satisfied in their comfortable, undisturbed faith.
It could be that they fit the description of having a form of godliness but denying the power thereof. Because Jesus does counsel them to buy from Him gold refined in the fire and white garments and eye salve.
The next encouragement is regarding overcoming. The term “overcome” or “victor” implies victory over the world, evil and all the adversaries of God’s kingdom.
This is something their current condition was making them incapable of.
So….
- Their view of being rich and in need of nothing.
- Their lukewarmness – whatever that was
- Their need for real god-likeness, righteousness and eyes to see
- Their need for responding with open hearts to Jesus’ communion with them
- Their need to overcome
Are all connected.
So our “examining ourselves in their light” must address all of these areas.
