Laodicea: Spiritually Deluded

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Transcript:

Hopefully you’re taking some of these things to heart. We’ve been talking for the past six weeks and again this morning about what if Jesus came to church. If Jesus were to come and sit down at Eastside Missionary Baptist Church and watch us not only as we have our Sunday services, but as we go through our lives through the week as Christians and as members of this church, what would He say?

How would He critique us? What would be the good things He would say to us? What would be the bad things that He would get on to us about?

What would be His instructions for us? And these are not entirely hypothetical questions because as we see in chapters 2 and 3 of Revelation, Jesus spoke to seven literal historical churches and He addressed the things that were going on in their churches. Now there are some people that say these represent seven ages in church history.

My problem with that is that some of these are the same people who say we’ve got to interpret the Bible absolutely literally. So why should we exclude the idea that there are seven literal churches that He’s speaking to? Now, each of these ages may correspond, may have some relation to different ages of history, but I prefer to focus on the plain, clear meaning of it, that he’s talking to seven churches here that had seven real situations, they had things going on in their churches, and what would Jesus say to them?

Because we can look at these churches and say, well, that, what’s going on there, that looks a little bit like Eastside. Well, that church looks nothing like us. Well, maybe we’ve got a little bit of that over there too.

Maybe we need to deal with this. And as I’ve said, I don’t think any of these perfectly peg the situation at our church, but I think we can take principles from this and look at what goes on in our church and see what is it that Jesus would say to us, and what is it that He would have us to do? What is it that He’d have us to do better?

What is it that He’d have us to do different? And we’re going to look today at the church at Laodicea. Now, everybody preaches on this church as an apostate church.

As a matter of fact, in the headings and notes in my Bible, it says, Message to Laodicea, the church in its final state of apostasy. If you don’t know what the word apostasy means, it’s a little bit different from heresy. Heresy is when somebody professes to be a Christian but teaches something that’s outside the confines of what Christians generally accept from the Bible to be true.

An example of this would be the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Mormons. They didn’t used to claim to be Christians. They used to claim to be something different.

Now they claim to be Christians, but if you get into what they mean by the words they use, the teachings are just completely removed from what the Bible teaches. You get even to the simple matter of who is Jesus Christ. We can’t agree on who He is. That would be an example of a heresy.

An apostasy would be someone who used to profess to be Christian and now has completely abandoned the faith altogether. And I would see this in some, not all, but some of the liberal Protestant churches. That there are some churches, I read about a Lutheran church in California last week, and I know this is not representative of all Lutherans, but they used to be a solid Lutheran church.

And now on Sunday nights they have a service where they have incense and candles that they burn to the mother goddess. And they’ve abandoned the idea of Christianity as the only true faith. they’ve abandoned the ideal that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, and that no man comes unto the Father but through Him.

They’ve abandoned that. And instead of even calling themselves a Christian church, Jesus is just one of the deities that they worship, and they talk about being ecumenical and new age and all these things. And we see a lot of churches that are rapidly approaching the point where they have completely thrown off any trappings of Christianity, other than maybe pews and Sunday worship.

Apostasy is different from heresy. It is a complete abandonment of Christian principles. It’s a complete abandonment of Christian teaching.

It’s the complete abandonment even of the pretense of even pretending to be Christian anymore. And it doesn’t have to be New Age teaching. It can be simply saying, I used to be a Christian, now I’m an atheist. Completely rejecting Christian teaching and the Christian God, that would be an apostate according to the definition.

I don’t see that at the church at Laodicea. I don’t. And as I’ve studied into what was going on at Laodicea, a lot of what I’ve heard in a lot of sermons on this church doesn’t seem to ring true.

This church at Laodicea doesn’t seem to have completely rejected Christ, doesn’t seem to have completely walked away from the faith. What I can see from the text, and what hopefully you’ll see in the next few minutes, is that the church at Laodicea got lazy. The church at Laodicea was spiritually deluded.

Now these people still claimed, I think, to be Christians. They still had a reverence for Jesus Christ, but as far as their spiritual condition, they were not lost in the sense that they were on their way to hell, but they had no spiritual direction. They were just kind of wandering.

It says in verse 14, and unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans, write, these things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God. Again, he always starts out by saying to the angel or the messenger of the church, write. He commands John to write.

And then he identifies himself by some characteristic that that particular church needs to know about Jesus Christ. And to the church at Laodicea, he says, I am the amen. Now, we have taken the word amen to mean some kind of agreement. You’ll hear me occasionally, very occasionally, make a good point, and somebody will say, Brother Phil, amen.

All right. Brother Phil, when you’re not here, by the way, it throws me off because surely that statement should have gotten one. Then I’ll look out and realize you’re gone.

Brother Phil and some others will usually say, Amen, meaning I agree, meaning that’s a good point. And that’s not a bad use of the word, but what the word originally meant. Somebody asked me, one of the ladies, I think, what the word Amen originally meant.

And I told him, I think of it as in the movie The Ten Commandments, when Ramses, the Pharaoh who hated Moses, would always say, so let it be written, so let it be done. Do you remember that part? He would often say that, so let it be written, so let it be done.

That word amen means let it be just like that. In other words, so let it be written, so let it be done. And so in a sense, it’s agreement, but it’s also saying let it be just like that.

That’s the way it is. And so when Jesus says He’s the Amen and calls Himself the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God, and we need to spend some time in just a second on that phrase, the beginning of the creation of God. But when He says He’s the Amen, the true and faithful witness, He’s already talked about being the one who by His very mouth utters the Word of God.

He’s the faithful and true witness to everything that God has said and professed and proclaimed, everything that God has declared to be so, and Jesus Christ being God in the flesh is the faithful and true witness to that. And then he says, I am the Amen. He’s identifying himself as one who says, let it be just like that.

And he refers the church at Laodicea back to the Word of God and their need for the Word of God and for the Word of God to be certain and established in their lives. And a lot of times we’ve gotten away from the idea in our own age of the sufficiency of the Word of God. that the Word of God, we believe the Bible is the Word of God.

We believe it has authority. We believe it’s without error. But we’ve gotten away from the idea of the sufficiency of the Word of God that it’s ultimately all we need.

And no, I’m not telling you don’t use commentaries and don’t use Bible dictionaries and all these things. Don’t read articles. Don’t listen to sermons.

What I’m saying is ultimately the Word of God has everything we need. Has everything we need. And He reminds them of that, the sufficiency and the authority of the Word of God, that it should be done and will be done just as he said, and he’s faithful and true to the things that God has said, because they had a serious problem in Laodicea with sufficiency.

As we’ll see in just a moment, they were looking to meet their needs, spiritual, physical, whatever, in everything but God. And he identifies himself also as the beginning of the creation of God. Now, if you just take that at face value, it could lend itself to teaching of many groups like the Jehovah’s Witnesses that Jesus Christ is a created being.

Why would that be a problem? Because if He’s a created being, He’s not the same as God. If He’s not the same as God, He’s just a man, ultimately.

Or you run into the problem of He’s a lesser God, so we have multiple gods now. It’s not saying He was the first thing created. This is not saying that He’s the first thing created.

In the Greek, that word beginning also means what we would call chief. He was in charge over all creation. We can read back to Genesis chapter 1 and where it says, Let us create man in our own image.

Jesus was there when the universe was spoken into existence. We can read John chapter 1 where it talks about in the beginning was the Word, not in the beginning God created the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. It says nothing about Jesus being created.

It says everything about Jesus being there from the beginning of the beginning, with God the Father, with God the Spirit, and being present and being in charge over all the creation of God. And so to read from this one little word beginning, that that must mean Jesus is a created creature, is not only wrong in the sense of this verse, but it’s wrong with the context of all of Scripture. And so in a way he identifies himself again as he has to the other churches, that he is God and he is with God, and he’s sovereign and in charge over all creation.

Ultimately, that’s what we need. We need a God who’s in control. We need a God who walks with us.

We need a God who not only tells us the truth, but is the truth himself. That’s what anybody needs. That’s what the church at Laodicea needed and was so desperately lacking because they were deluded, as we’re going to see in just a moment, into thinking that they could do things on their own.

He says to them, I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot. I would thou work cold or hot. And this is a well-known and often quoted verse.

But of all the sermons I’ve ever heard, of all the teaching I’ve ever heard on this verse, it has never set well with me. It has never been completely satisfying, this idea that we’re talking about in spiritual terms. Being hot means being on fire for the Lord, and being cold means dead, spiritually dead and separated from Him and all these things. And that Jesus talks to a church comprised of saved people, who were not necessarily acting like saved people, but talks to a church of saved people and says, you’d be better off if you were on fire for me or even lost. It’s never quite set well with me that Jesus has said.

. . If He’d said here, I wish you were red hot, I wish you were on fire, I could go along with that interpretation.

But for Jesus to speak to a group of people that He had given His life for, had so much love and mercy and grace toward them that He gave His own life so that they could have forgiveness from God and said, I wish you were hot or cold. I don’t, that explanation that he’s talking about in spiritual matters, being completely on fire for Christ or being completely alien, foreign to him, doesn’t square with what I understand of the Bible. And I’m not trying to stand here and tell you that every preacher I’ve ever heard talk about Laodicea is wrong and I’m right because I’m so brilliant.

I’m not. But what I’m going to tell you is I’ve done some more research into Laodicea and I’m going to suggest for you what I think is a better explanation of what he’s talking about here. He says, I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot.

I would thou wert cold or hot. And as I read up on Laodicea, because as we’ve talked about, you always want context, you always want to not just take one verse out at random, you want to see what’s going on in the whole chapter, sometimes the whole book. What’s the theme of the book?

What’s the purpose of the book? What was going on in the world that these people lived in? Because sometimes God will use language that we understand to mean one thing, but they lived in a completely different culture and would understand to mean another.

And that may be a case of what’s going on here. Around Laodicea, what I read from historians this week, around Laodicea, they had a bunch of springs. And they had some springs that were hot, and they had some springs that were cold.

Now, can you immediately think of a use for cold water? Anybody? Drink, okay?

And you would find that refreshing probably, right? Especially if you’re out working on a hot day. A cold water is refreshing.

It’s wonderful. And sometimes you’re working outside and it’s hot, And, you know, we all tend to like tea and Cokes and all those things. But sometimes you’ve got a thirst that only cold water can quench.

And so this cold water was refreshing from these cold springs. They also had in the area these hot springs. And hot springs, hot water we use for a lot of things.

Hot water you can use to cook with. Hot water you can use to clean with. It’s cleansing.

It has all these good properties. You’d have the water come out of the hot springs and the cold springs, And it was useful, but as it sat there a little while, as it had time to settle, it would become tepid or lukewarm. And it wasn’t much good for anything.

I mean, maybe water the horses or the dogs or whatever with. But as far as our human uses, it wasn’t good for refreshment. I mean, if you’re thirsty enough, you’ll drink lukewarm tap water if you have to.

But it’s not the most refreshing beverage in the world. And you can clean with, I can mop the floor with lukewarm water if I want to. But folks, I bought a steam mop that works so much better.

You get that hot water and you won’t want to walk on the floor for a little bit after that because it gets so hot. But that tepid lukewarm water was just not, I mean it was there, it was all right, but it just wasn’t as useful as the cold or the hot. And knowing this about what they had with the springs and had the water available, it seems more likely to me that He’s talking about their usefulness because they’ve either come out of the ground immediately and bubbled up hot or cold and they’re good for refreshment or for cleansing, or have they sat there and stagnated and become useless.

It seems more likely to me that having written to them with what was going on in their world, that that would be the explanation they would understand than for Jesus to say to people for whom He died, you know, if you’re not going to act right, I wish you were just lost. I wish you were cold. It says, I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot. I would thou wert cold or hot.

So then, because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth. And a problem with the previous interpretation of saying, he’s talking about spiritually hot or spiritually cold, is the idea that comes from this then, that when he talks about spewing them out of his mouth, he’s talking about people losing their salvation. And if I haven’t been abundantly clear every time we come up on a passage like this, I do not believe you can lose your salvation once you’ve truly been saved.

I know there’s a lot of disagreement. I understand looking at passages that people take for that. I understand why they could think that.

But the overall consensus of the Bible to me, the overall plain, clear teaching of the Bible to me, seems to be you cannot lose your salvation once you’ve been saved. What’s that? That’s right.

Amen. men. Thank you, sir.

Somebody’s paying attention back there. The Bible doesn’t teach this idea of conditional salvation. So the idea of being spewed out of the mouth as though Jesus is completely and forever rejecting these people because of their lukewarm state, because they’re just not on fire enough, might be well preached in some churches, but it doesn’t seem to cut for me with what the Bible teaches.

It’s more likely, going back to the idea of the usefulness of the hot water and the cold water, you’re expecting refreshing cold water or you’re expecting piping hot water for a cup of tea and you take a drink of it and it’s room temperature and it just is gross and you would spit it out because it’s not useful for what you needed. I don’t see here that Jesus is completely and finally rejecting these people. I believe He’s saying to them that they are not useful for His purposes the way they are, the way they have continued to sit and take on the characteristics of the world around them.

So we would naturally expect him to spew it out of his mouth. If it’s not good for what you need it for, then why take it? He says in verse 17, Now it’s important to look at verse 19.

I told you early on, I think I mentioned the first week, maybe the first two weeks, talked about the song that my dad had me listen to where the guy talked about, my Jesus would never be accepted in my church, and talked about all the people who, I saw billboards up all the time back home in Norman and more, that said things like, love Christ but hate the church. And people talking about how traditional church, Jesus was just fed up with it. Jesus was just sick of it.

And I thought that’s pretty presumptuous to say that the local church is the bride of Christ and here you are saying that Jesus hates his wife and wants a divorce. I don’t see that in Scripture. And I told you that Jesus to each of these churches came and he might have some harsh words for them, some things that needed to be fixed, but what we don’t see is him attacking them out of disgust and saying, you know, I want nothing more to do with you.

And that idea was challenged a little bit by him telling the church at Laodicea, because you’re lukewarm, I’d spew you out of my mouth. I’ve heard that explained before as saying, as Jesus telling the church at Laodicea, you make me vomit. And these sound like harsh words, like Jesus is just absolutely through.

He’s fed up and He’s done with the church at Laodicea. He’s disgusted with them and wants them out of His life. Until you get to verse 19, and He says, as many as I love, I rebuke and chasten.

He’s not telling them they make Him sick. He’s done with them. He wants rid of them.

He’s saying, because I love you, I’m going to tell you the truth because these things need to be fixed. Never do I see Jesus in His Word speak to one of His churches and tell them that He hates them. Now, there are places where He talks about the doctrines of such and such heretical group, such and such person, and He hates their doctrines, He hates their actions.

But when it comes to the churches of Jesus Christ, never do I hear Him say, I hate you, you disgust me. And what I hear him say is in verse 19, as many as I love, I rebuke and chastise, chasten, be zealous therefore and repent. Church at Laodicea, what he said to you, he said out of love, out of concern, because there was still time to repent.

There was still time to turn back. And he’s told them, the root of their problem here seems to be their apathy, their feeling of self-sufficiency. The fact that they have tricked themselves into thinking that they had everything they needed right before them.

It says in verse 17, Because thou sayest I am rich and increased with goods and have need of nothing. The church thought that it was in a good position. And it doesn’t say really anything about their spiritual state.

But today it would probably be like a church that doesn’t care about the spiritual things going on in the church. It doesn’t care about the spiritual growth. As long as they’ve got enough people coming in, they’ve got enough money coming in, they’ve got enough things going on, the church looks good and we’re doing well, we’re self-sufficient, we’re plugging right along and everything’s fine and dandy.

This church looked around and they were increased with goods. They were wealthy. They were prestigious.

He says they’re rich and they’re increased with goods and they think they have need of nothing. There’s nothing we need. It’s easier in a smaller church.

The offerings dip just a little bit and we remember our reliance on God because we may think, and it hadn’t happened here since I’ve been the pastor, but I’ve pastored other churches where it was the case. God, how are we going to pay the light bill this month? There’s no chance, or I should say there’s less chance of thinking that we’re self-sufficient.

But this church had convinced themselves out of their wealth that they didn’t need anybody. The problem was that had come to include God as well. He said they thought they were rich and increased with goods and needed nothing.

He says, and knowest not that thou art wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked. He gets past the outside, past the shell, past the veneer where they looked wealthy and prosperous and growing and vital and all these things and says on the inside, on the inside, you’re not nearly as good as you seem to think you are. You don’t realize that you’re wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked.

In other words, you don’t even realize you’re so deeply in need, you don’t even realize the needs you have. And we’ll run into people who are so in need of what God has to offer that they don’t even realize the need they have. They are so blind to the truth, they don’t even see.

Well, of course, they don’t see. They’re so blind to the truth, they don’t even see that they’re blind. It’s like my dog Sophie I’ve told you all about before.

she’s blind, and as far as we know, she was blind from birth. But she runs around like the other dogs, runs around with the other dogs. They, of course, don’t know she’s blind.

She doesn’t seem to know she’s blind, because that’s all she’s ever known. And so she’ll run into things, run into the coffee table, run into the wall, run into the door, especially if stuff is moved. She gets pretty good at memorizing where stuff is, but if stuff’s moved, she’ll run right into it.

It doesn’t seem to bother her, because she doesn’t know any different. She’s so, she’s lived her life in such blindness that she doesn’t even realize there’s something wrong, that there’s something lacking. My dog is a lot like the church at Laodicea.

Folks, they were so blind to their own needs that they didn’t even realize that they were in need. They didn’t realize there was so much more that God had to offer than just the wealth and the prosperity and the vitality that they seemed to project on the outside. That there were spiritual needs, there were spiritual shortcomings that needed to be filled and could only be filled by the one who is all sufficient, the amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of God’s creation.

And so he says, he doesn’t tell them, go out and try to do more things. Folks, I feel like I preached this message before just a couple of months ago. Similar points, different passage.

It’s amazing how God, it’s amazing to me how we don’t always get the point the first time and God has to talk about it more than once in his word. But he doesn’t tell them, go out and start more things. Go out and just do more and try harder and be better.

Because there’s only so good we can be on our own, folks. There’s only so much we can do. And we can try everything we can to work outwardly and manufacture Holy Spirit revival in our church, but it doesn’t happen if it’s man’s effort.

Instead, what they needed could only be supplied by God and not by their own efforts. He tells them, I counsel you to buy of me, buy from me, gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich. And no, God is not here on a talk show commercial trying to sell gold to the people.

What he’s talking about, this gold tried by the fire, is an illusion, I believe, to the Old Testament, especially if I remember correctly, the book of Malachi, where he talks about a day coming that will burn as an oven, and all the works of man being burnt up like wood, hay, and stubble. And yet our works in God, what God gives, the gold that God gives, is refined by the fire, while the worthless things are burned off. And everything they had, all their wealth, all their effort, all these things would in the last days be burned up like wood, hay, and stubble.

He says, instead, invest yourselves in me. Buy of me gold tried by the fire, tried in the fire that thou mayest be rich. Quit concerning yourselves with what you can buy, what you can purchase, what you can achieve, and start trusting in the things that last that only God can provide, that thou mayest be rich.

And white raiment that thou mayest be clothed and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear. He said they didn’t even realize that spiritually they were naked. That means they were completely lacking.

They had nothing. And they could work and try to clothe themselves in human works. But the Bible says in the book of Isaiah that all of our good works are like filthy rags.

So why try to cover ourselves in the filthy rags of human effort? Why try to just do what we can do when God supplies us with white robes? and anoint your eyes with eye salve that thou mayest see.

They were blind, and no amount of effort was going to fix that, but they needed the prescription that only God could provide. All of this, again, we could go into all the details as I mentioned last week on some of the things. We could go into all the little details of what these mean, but overall what this means is that the things that they stood desperately in need of and didn’t even realize they needed, but the things they were desperately in need of only God could provide, so look to Him for His provision.

He says, as many as I love, I rebuke and chasten. Be zealous therefore and repent. It’s not a message of hatred.

It’s not a message of judgment. I’m going to get you for this. It’s a message of this is wrong and I’m willing to set things at right if you’ll just turn back to me.

And like his children, he rebukes and chastens them because like you with your own children and like me with mine, they may think we hate them when we give them a spanking, but it’s because we love them too much to let them act that way. That’s exactly how God approaches the church here. He loves them too much to let them act that way.

He says, Behold, I stand at the door and knock. This is still the voice of a God, of a Savior, who was willing to give them what they needed if they would just receive it. Behold, I stand at the door and knock.

If any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to him and will sup with him and he with me. That’s hardly the voice of someone who’s saying, I hate you and I want nothing more to do with this church. To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame and have sat down with my Father in His throne.

In all of these letters, there’s a promise to those who overcome. And we can take from that the idea that we’ve got to work harder and overcome the world and do these things, but that flies in the face of what He’s telling them here, where they’ve been so focused on what they could do, what they could achieve. John tells us in another of his writings that what overcomes the world is our faith.

The one who’s overcome the world is the one who believes in the Son of God. And when we trust Jesus Christ as our Savior, we’ve overcome the world. And He says, to Him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me on my throne.

That means we will be with Him for eternity because of faith. There’s something else that only God can provide. We couldn’t make a way for ourselves to get to heaven.

He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches. Now just in the next few minutes, we’ll talk about this idea of their spiritual delusion. They had tricked themselves into thinking that they were good enough where they are.

And I won’t say we’re exactly like the church at Laodicea, but in most churches today, probably this one included, there’s at least some element of we’ve convinced ourselves that the way we are right now, the way things are right now, are good, this is all we need, we’re getting along just fine. And what we’re really doing is coasting along by human effort. A deluded church, though, ignores its need for God and convinces itself that it’s well off.

A deluded church ignores its need for God and convinces itself that it’s well off. Folks, this church had grown so comfortable, so complacent. It had come to a place of ease where it was just easy to sit there and be.

They were in a good position, but spiritually they were falling apart, and it’s because they had started to rely on themselves instead of relying on God. I love the verse that says, Trust in the Lord and lean not to thine own understanding. There are verses all through Psalms and Proverbs that talk of similar themes.

The arm of flesh will fail. that tell us that everything we can do, if we can accomplish anything at all, it’s only fleeting. Folks, it’s better to put our trust in God and see what He can accomplish in us and through us.

If we as a church get to the point where we think, oh, we’ve got this, we can do this, we can make this happen, folks, we are headed for disaster as a church. We as a church, corporately and as individually as members of the church, should be on our faces before God every day, asking for Him to do in us and through us what only He can do. As I’ve said before, if we’ll do that, we might accidentally see somebody get saved.

Wouldn’t that be wonderful? We might accidentally see revival happen. But a deluded church ignores its need for God and convinces itself that it’s well off, when it’s really not.

And a deluded church that does thi