TEXT: Revelation 3:14-22

SUBJECT: Seven Churches of Asia #7: Laodicea

Seventy years ago Andrew Nelson Lytle wrote an essay praising the South for its fierce pride and self-sufficiency. While the Yankees depended on banks and stores, charity and relief, his people took care of themselves. If they couldn’t make it at home—he said—they did without it.

There’s a lot to be said for taking care of yourself and the self-respect that comes with it. But--like milk and eggs--independence can go bad. And when it does go bad—like milk and eggs—it stinks!

This is what happened to the church in Laodicea. Its independence went bad and became a smugness that turned the stomach of its Savior, our Lord Jesus Christ. If this happened to one church only, we’d click our tongues and be done with it. But more than one church has gone bad in this way, and no church is exempt from the danger.

Especially churches with no heresy, open scandal, or persecution. In other words, especially churches like our own. Have we become like Laodicea? If we have, we need to repent and without further discussion or delay. If we haven’t we need to thank the Lord for sparing us and beware of the ever-present danger of complacency.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Laodicea was a major city on the trade route that connected the eastern and western parts of the Empire. Every caravan that traveled from, let’s say, Mesopotamia to Greece passed through Laodicea and spent a lot of its money there.

But don’t mistake it for a tourist trap! It had a famous medical school, sparkling bathhouses, magnificent towers, and (what no American city can do without) a sports complex, with both an outdoor stadium and an indoor gymnasium. The people were proud of their city.

And never more so than now. A few years before, a huge earthquake had left the city in shambles, but the citizens had quickly rebuilt it—and without public funds! The historian, Tacitus writes,

Caesar had offered to help in rebuilding Laodicea, but the people said, ‘Thanks anyway, but we’ll take care of it ourselves’. And it was no empty boast they made: they did just that, and with splendid results!

The people prided themselves on their independence born of a can-do spirit.

This spirit got into the church. In most ways, the disciples of Christ were as different as they could be from the pagans all around them. While the pagans worshiped many gods, the Christians served the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ—and no one else. While the pagans lived in gross sin, the believers practiced self-control (most of the time) and when they slipped into sin, they confessed their faults and got back on the straight-and- narrow. While the pagans said, Caesar is Lord, the church was willing to die for not saying it. Without being perfect, the Christians had better families, put in a better day’s work, and lived more quietly and generously than anyone else in Laodicea. .

But for all this, they were as smug and self-satisfied as the dirtiest and most ignorant heathen in town! Did they know they were proud of themselves? I don’t believe they did. Because everyone was this way, it seemed the only way to be. When I was in Russia, I was surprised at the dishonesty of the Christians there. But when I talked to a Russian in America, he was equally surprised by the materialism and the wastefulness of the church in our country. Each saw the faults of the other, but neither saw his own faults because they were the faults of everyone where he lived.

If the whole town was overly pleased with itself, so was the church.

If our Lord winked at the city, He frowned at the church. He begins by calling Himself,

Amen means ‘truly’. To the average man it had no special signficance, but the Christian is not the average man, and to him it has a ring of the sacred and the serious. Back when Israel got its land from God, days were appointed for the public reading of the Law. The whole Law wasn’t read on these occasions, but selections were, and in particular, Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28. The chapters are full of blessings on obedience and curses on disobedience. The happy list would be read from the top of Mount Gerizim, the sad list from Mount Ebal, across the valley. At the end of the both readings, the people were to say, ‘Amen’. ‘That’s true—God will bless us if we obey’. ‘That’s true—God will curse us if we rebel’.

By applying the name to Himself, our Lord is both insisting on the truth of what’s He saying and sobering them up to listen and believe.

He’s also Faithful and True Witness. Now, ‘witness’ can be used in more ways than one, but here—it seems to me—to be used in the formal sense of offering testimony at a trial. Jesus Christ—you might say—is solemnly swearing that what He says is true. But what’s He saying? He’s accusing them of the crime of smugness.

Finally we have the difficult words, The Beginning of the creation of God. The cults say this means our Lord is a creature—the greatest creature, but not the Creator. Though this is possible grammatically, it could not be the meaning, for the whole Word of God says Jesus Christ is God! Others take it to be parallel to Colossians 1:15, where He is called the firstborn of all creation, or in other words, the heir of creation. This is better theology, but it’s hard to fit that meaning into the words of v.14.

I think Vern Poythress is right when he says the creation referred to here is the new creation. To quote from his commentary,

Put the three titles together, and what we have is a Lord who cannot stand fakery of any kind, who knows a phony when He sees one, and who, all the same, wants to transform a false life into a true one. In other words, we have a Lord who both just and merciful, a Lord to be both feared and loved.

The church’s conceit is a kind of blindness. Squinting at themselves in the mirror, they say they’re

While in fact, they are

Please understand: this is not one opinion versus another. If a Reformed Baptist hears this sermon, he’s likely to say, ‘It’s too short’. But if an Episcopalian sat through it, he’d say, ‘It’s too long’. Which opinion is right? Neither one is right or wrong because they’re both opinions—and nothing more.

But the Amen, the Faithful and True Witness doesn’t have opinions! What He says is true—not true to Him--but what Francis Schaeffer called true truth.

How could they be so mistaken about themselves? I don’t think they took lukewarmness for a good thing. They knew it was a bad thing, but they didn’t know they were that way. How come? The Lord doesn’t say and we must be careful with our guesses, but perhaps they mistook—

--Knowing doctrine for knowing God

--Good manners for brotherly love

--A lot of activity for spiritual life

--‘No scandalous sins’ for holiness

--‘Being hearers of the Word’ for ‘being doers of the Word’

--Supporting missions for evangelizing the lost

--‘No big problems in the church’ for ‘unity in the church’

These are only guesses, of course, but they make good sense and they hit mighty close to home, don’t they? It is easy to mistake a form of godliness for the power thereof!

The church is like lukewarm tea. I love iced tea, my wife prefers hot tea, but no one likes tea in the middle. Least of all , our Lord Jesus Christ who threatens to

This is a figure of speech, and it’s easy to put a word to it: the word is rejection. Jesus Christ is about the reject this church because of its complacency.

If the words sound harsh to us, just imagine what they sounded like to the church they were first spoken to. The Lord has joined them for Sunday Dinner and found their food so bad that He spits it out of the table!

That’s what smugness tastes like to Him. Like rancid meat, like curdled milk, like green cottage cheese!

If we believed this, we wouldn’t be so happy with ourselves, would we?

If things are bad in Laodicea, they are not hopeless. Remember that! The president of Family Radio sees the mess the Church is in and counsels despair—get out while you can! But the Lord does not get out; He says, Repent.

He uses three figures of speech—

Buy from Me gold refined in the fire that you may be rich. The money they had was counterfeit; they took it for real, but the Lord knew better. What does this mean? It means trade in the empty rituals for the Real Thing. It means quit being satisfied with public prayers that sound acceptable—and start praying!

Buy from Me…white garments. The lukewarm church is wearing no clothes, and even though they think they look mighty sharp in their light summer outfits, others are turning away in embarrassment. In short, quit wearing the see-through clothes of make believe holiness, and start wearing the real thing.

Anoint your eyes with eye salve. The city’s medical school was famous for opthamology—they produced the best ‘eye doctors’ in the world. Who restored vision with a salve of some kind. What opens the eyes of the church is the Word of Christ. But only if they use it—by listening to what He says, accepting it, and doing what He says to fix it.

The Lord has spoken severely to the church—not a word of praise, but only biting and sarcastic criticism. But they mustn’t take His hard words for a hard heart. No, the Lord who bawls them out only does it because He loves them—

The Lord who took them to the woodshed is now standing at the front door of their church asking them to let Him in. Why? Because He still wants their fellowship. He hates sin, but not sinners! He hates sin because He loves sinners, and He knows they can never be happy as long as they are lukewarm. The rough shaking He’s given them, therefore, is a way of waking them up to get out of a burning house.

Near the end, He makes two promises—one for now and one for later. If they open the church door to Christ, He says,

This means He will make up with them! He won’t hold a grudge or treat them with cold courtesy. No! He’s coming in and enjoying their company and they His! He won’t keep His anger; He’ll let bygones be bygones.

What an offer of grace! Years ago I had some very good friends—among the best friends I ever had. Something happened between us and we both said things we shouldn’t have. A few days later we apologized to each other and started to get along again, but things were not quite the same. Whether it was their fault or mine—or both—I can’t say. They now live on the other side of the country, but if I called them up this afternoon, we’d have a nice talk, I’m sure—but it wouldn’t be like the old days!

We’ve all had experiences like this. When our friendships are mended, you can still see the patch! But not with our Lord Jesus Christ. He wants to get back to the old days and improve on them. And He will. When the church repents.

If this promise is good, the other one is better:

When we overcome our lukewarmness, we will have a place of honor in the world to come. What a promise this is—and how favorably it compares to some of the other promises in the Seven Letters. Some Christians had to die for Christ to win this award, but not the Laodiceans, and perhaps, not us. All they had to do was catch fire for Christ. The same is true of us. When we shake off our stupor and stop being satisfied with our mediocrity, then we too will have our place alongside the King!