To the angel of the church in Laodicea

0:01 So let's read Revelation 3. The angel of the church in Laodicea write, These are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the ruler or the beginning, the origin of God's creation, other translations have. I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other. So because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I am about to spit you. Or again, other translations, I think more accurately say, I'm about to vomit you out of my mouth. You say I am rich, I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing. But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.

0:44 I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire so you can become rich and white clothes to wear so you can cover over your shameful nakedness and salve to put on your eyes so you can see. Those whom I love, I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest and repent. Here I am. I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person and they with me. To the one who is victorious, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne just as I was victorious and sat down with my father on his throne. Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches.

1:34 How accurately do we see ourselves spiritually? How clearly do we see our true spiritual state? It is a question that has been repeated throughout this series as we've looked at these letters. And it is a question again that sits at the heart of this letter to this self-deceived church in Laodicea. As you're aware, I am a dad of two young men, 22 and 19. And anybody else who has young men in their house of a similar age, maybe from about 14 or 15 up, know that whenever they get together that their dad is often a butt of their jokes. They enjoy taking the mickey out of him and bring him down a peg or two. That's just part of the banter of life.

2:28 It's always gentle, it's never too bad. But the most recent one of those was whenever we were all sitting around about a week and a half ago, I think, and one of the boys was looking back at old photos on his phone and there was a family selfie in that. And so the conversation turned to the fact that my face looks totally different in selfies than it does in real life. In fact, I think the word they used was, your face looks weird. And the implication of what they were saying basically was that, and they brought up lots of other photos as extra evidence, was the idea that I actually must have this unsymmetrical face. That's what I have to put up with. And then they went on and said, Well, the implication of that must be that the person that you have looked at in the mirror for the last 48 years is not the person there is there in reality. There is a difference between what you see and what is actually there, even if it's only just a little bit.

3:32 And we know that when it comes to how we see ourselves at a deeper level than that, that all sorts of factors play their part in that. And for some of us, all those factors will play and come together and will end up maybe being people who struggle with self-esteem or insecurity, but there are many others of us on the other side. And that those factors have come together and actually when it comes to our academic life or our professional life or whatever it is, that we have this real self-sufficiency. We are capable people. We are problem solvers. We are really confident and self-sufficient. We don't need other people. And actually it's that perspective on ourselves

4:24 that truly impairs how we actually see our spiritual state. It bleeds into how we look at our spiritual state. And that appears to be then the situation in this church Laodicea. It was full of very successful people. It was full of high flyers. The personality, the DNA of the city was itself one of almost strutting self-confidence. It was a deeply prosperous city as a result of where it sat geographically. It sat on a crossroads linking the coast with the interior of Asia Minor and north was south.

5:01 And so it had built up for itself a massive banking center. It had developed a renowned textile industry, and it had an empire famous medical center, amongst other things. It was rich, this city. It was prosperous. It was deeply proud of its self-sufficiency and success. And this was illustrated in a very particular way when the city was decimated by an earthquake in AD 60, and the citizens came together themselves, and they said, we are going to pay fully ourselves for this reconstruction, and we are going to refuse any outside imperial aid from Rome. We are going to do this by ourselves, and they did. We are Laodicea.

5:53 You imagine a slogan, we are independent, we are resourceful, we are rich. and it appears then that from Jesus' rebuke of this church that we've just read that the DNA, the personality of the city has bled into the personality of the church. It's shaped its DNA. And let me give you an imaginary example of maybe somebody who might have been in this church to help you think this through. So imagine you are a man of my age in the city, in the church in Laodicea at the time. You've lived in the city your whole life. You believed in Jesus as a teenager and you became an active part of this church, a church from what we can gather from Colossians 4 in particular, that was established and certainly in some way planted by Paul's companion, Epaphras. But that was 30 years ago.

6:55 And you and your generation in the church have grown up and you've made your way and you've taken advantage of the opportunities that this city gives to people. And you have become a very prosperous, successful banker. You make a lot of money. You wear the best threads of the black wool that comes from the textile industry of this city. And you move in significant social circles. You are someone in this city. You're rich. You've prospered.

7:24 You need nothing. And 30 years on, you're still part of the church. You still hold to the faith of your youth, but you have brought something of this self-reliance, this confidence, this arrogance, this strutting even, from your professional and your civic life, and you've brought it into the life of your church, along with many of your contemporaries who have sort of followed the same path. And together, you've mutated the character of this church. In a sense, you've made it about you, about what you can achieve, what success you can manufacture with your own strength and your own ingenuity in this community. And the metrics then by which you measure your church's success, well, they've become so infected by the city as well. You're concerned with numbers. You're concerned with money.

8:20 You're concerned with whether these significant people in the city go to your church. You're concerned with how the church looks to the outside. It's branding. And so the idea that you could admit any sort of spiritual vulnerability to yourself, never mind anybody else. The idea that you could admit real struggles with sin and weakness and brokenness, again to yourself, never mind anybody else. the idea that you might be incapable in some way and can't sort things out for yourself spiritually well in a sense you can't really entertain it because your whole identity is built is constructed on your pride self-sufficiency how do you go from being a confident successful banker in the city during the day to being a vulnerable sinner in need of grace in the evening and maybe some of us can empathize with that so the reality is that this is a church full of self-inflicted blindness

9:33 and so sin is not being confessed or challenged or dealt with because no one's admitting to it and in fact tragically no one is seeing it there'd be no point in this church in having a prayer room because no one would ever think they actually needed prayer there might be professions of devotion they'll sing the songs but they're hollow and they're empty spiritual growth is stagnant and this is not a lampstand that is in any way reflecting the light of christ do you notice there's no praise for this church at all it's not praise and then a repute it's all this in fact it appears from what jesus says to them here that he the owner of the lampstand the holder of their star has pretty much been left outside the door of this church for a long time. It's almost like they're saying, we are the church of Laodicea. We are rich. We are prosperous. We do not need a thing. And by implication saying, Jesus,

10:34 we've got this. We don't necessarily even need you. So what does Jesus have to say to this church in its current state? Well, first of all, as we read at the beginning, he lays out his credentials as the one whose assessment, whose judgment of them should be taken seriously. He tells this proud, self-sufficient church that he is the amen. He is the one who is completely trustworthy. He is the one in whom all the promises of God find their yes in. He is also the faithful and true witness, the one who speaks the truth, who knows the truth, who is the truth.

11:21 In Proverbs 16, 11, it says this, honest skills and balances belong to the Lord. Have you ever weighed yourself on a dishonest scale? Maybe you've liked it that way. But honest skills and balances belong to the Lord. All the weights in the bag are of his making. You see, he's the only one with with the right perspective, he's the only one with a clear vision to actually assess us accurately and tell us what we are really like. And he is also then, the Greek, the beginning, the origin, the ruler of creation. In other words, he's almost saying to them, you think you're successful?

12:03 I'm the ruler of all of creation. It finds its beginning, its origin in me. It was all made by me, through me, for me. You think you deserve glory? I'm the ruler of creation. And so the amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning and ruler of creation gives this church his assessment. And it is shocking. Here's what he says to him.

12:30 They taste lukewarm. This church tastes lukewarm. And there is a fascinating context to the assessment. You see, as already mentioned, Laodicea had some significant geographical advantages in terms of where it was situated. But it also had a significant geographical problem. It did not have its own water source. Did not have its own water supply. Nearby, Colossae was well known for its pure cold water source.

13:04 And then the other major city in the Lycus Valley area where Laodicea was, was a city called Hierapolis, and it had these well-renowned, rejuvenating, healing hot springs. Pure cold water, healing hot water. But Laodicea had nothing. Now, they did put their self-sufficiency and their ingenuity into play. And they did build an amazing aqueduct that actually piped in water into their city from miles away, it even piped the water uphill. But their self-sufficiency only got them so far. You see, yes they got water, but by the time the water had traveled those miles, it had become lukewarm. And all these minerals had been deposited it into it, and so it was particularly unpleasant and nasty to drink.

14:06 You see, pure cold water is useful, it's refreshing, it's thirst quenching, it's satisfying. Hot water too, it's useful, and to drink, it's satisfying and enjoyable, but lukewarm drinks? I love a nice latte. I love a hot Americano, but if I've left my coffee for half an hour and forget about it and take a sip of it. We all know it's disgusting. We want to spit it out. And that is the way that Jesus here defines their works, their deeds, their faith in action as his church. They are to him nauseating in their cocky complacency.

14:48 They are to him vomit inducing in their half-hearted, sinful, tepid, self-serving self-sufficiency. Their deeds are lifeless and hollow and lukewarm because their deeds are Christless. They do not come from a relationship with him. They're not devoted, passionate, enthusiastic, zealous. They've left him, their Lord, outside the door. And so from his perfect vantage point, with his perfect vision and understanding, with those honest scales, he then goes on to tell them what their true state is. You say, I'm rich, I've acquired wealth, and do not need a thing. That's the inner monologue of your life and the life of your church, but your scales are miles off.

15:45 Your perspective is so wide of the mark, you are deceiving yourselves. You do not realize, tragically, that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. You've let your success and your wealth delude you about what you're actually like without me spiritually. And I was thinking about this. This is the last church of the letter being passed around and going on its journey. And so all the other churches have read everything that's been said to every church, and then it's arrived in Laodicea. So every other church has read what Christ says to Laodicea.

16:27 Can you imagine receiving this letter, these proud, successful people and hearing these shocking words of rebuke, knowing that all of the other churches have read them before you even got to hear them? I want to vomit you out of my mouth. Expecting to read sort of an A star assessment because that's all you've ever really experienced, but then actually being given a U and that being read out in assembly in front of everybody else. Your self-delusion being exposed in front of others, it's language, it's imagery from Jesus that is meant to shock and arrest and unsettle and provoke. It's meant to wake this church up to the way they truly are. It is shocking language, shocking metaphorical language. and it's there for a reason. But here's the thing.

17:23 It is shocking and it is stark, but it is shocking and stark language that is motivated by love. Those whom I love, I rebuke and discipline. Motivated by Jesus' unfailing love for his failing church, he is going to shock them if it means that they move. Jesus knows that unless they come face to face with and accept and own again their true spiritual state without him in their lives, without him in their church, they will not be able to open their hands to receive what they truly need from him. And he's not giving up on them. He wants to give them what they need to lift them out of the reality of their spiritual poverty and their spiritual nakedness and their spiritual blindness. He wants to pour out on them by his grace what they can only receive from him so that he might make them a church that is once again pleasing and satisfying to him. And look then at how the tone changes.

18:34 It doesn't stay stark and shocking the whole way through. Then he goes on, I counsel you. He could have said, I demand of you. He could have said, I require of you. But look, he says, I counsel you. Trust in my word, put your faith in my love for you. Listen to my counsel to buy from me gold refined in the fire so you can become rich, and white clothes to wear so you can cover your shameful nakedness, and salve to put on your eyes so you can see. That's a really interesting phrase, I counsel you to buy from me.

19:12 There's an irony in here. Here's these people who were so proud of their riches, so proud of their buying power, and yet what they need? Well, it's from Christ, but it's actually for free. Price tag zero, it's already been bought by him. He's already paid the full price of the cross on their behalf, and it takes us back to those verses in Isaiah. Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters. And you who have no money, come buy and eat. come by wine and milk without money and without cost.

19:49 So he's saying to them, come to me and acknowledge that your earthly riches are valueless before God and in his kingdom. And exchange those worthless things, those riches, your misplaced confidence in them with the confidence in my gold refined by fire. My spiritual treasure bought by me for you. My acceptance, my redemption, my transforming power, refining your faith as by fire. My inheritance, think Ephesians 2, my kingdom and my intimate presence with you. That's real spiritual wealth. Come to me then, he says, acknowledge to me that your self-sufficient works done in your own strength and your own ingenuity. Do nothing to cover up your spiritual nakedness and then hold out your empty hands

20:50 and let me place in them the white clothes of my righteousness that do truly cover your shame and that stop you having to strive come to me and acknowledge to me your spiritual blindness then confess acknowledge the fact that you can't see clearly without my help it's possible that one of the medical breakthroughs in the in this famous medical center in Laodicea was an ointment that used these powders, Phrygian powders, that really healed inflammation of the eyes. And Jesus may well be alluding to that here when he offers them salve for their eyes so that they can see clearly. His word, think of other passages as a lamp and a light. His teaching giving clarity of vision

21:58 that then allows these people to see their spiritual state clearly. How wretched they are, yes, but also how loved and accepted they are as well. And then comes Jesus' call. Those whom I love, I rebuke and discipline, so be earnest and repent. Here I am. I stand at the door and knock. He's saying this to a church. He's saying this to a group, a community of believers.

22:25 If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person and they with me. I'm giving you this rebuke, Jesus says. I'm disciplining you in this way because I love you and I don't want to leave you in your poverty, in your nakedness, in your blindness. So the question then comes to us, how are you going to respond? Are you going to accept my discipline and my rebuke? Makes me think of Proverbs 3, my son, do not despise the Lord's discipline. We can so easily do that. Do not resent his rebuke because the Lord disciplines those he loves.

23:09 Do we see it that way? as a father the son he delights in or Proverbs 15 those who disregard discipline despise themselves if we keep that discipline at arm's length what Proverbs is saying is that we actually despise ourselves in doing that but the one who heeds correction gains understanding don't despise my counsel Jesus says but let it spur you on into earnest zealous repentance what does that look like I think it might look something like this saying yes Lord I know and confess that I have allowed my self-sufficiency in the world to mislead me into self-delusion about my true spiritual state I know and confess that before you without Christ I am poor and naked and blind I know that I've arrogantly slipped into relying on my strength, my own strength, my own striving, my own ability, and that's crept in over time when it comes to living my life. And I see now just how useless and how hollow that has been. And so I relinquish my self-confident, lukewarm strivings, because they can only be lukewarm without Christ being at the center of them, that nauseate you.

24:35 And I hold out my hands and I ask you, give me your gold. Give me your white clothes. Give me yourself for my eyes. I hear you knocking at the door of my life. I'm not really even sure that I've realized that I've kept you outside. And I open the door and invite you in to eat with me and I with you once again. This imagery.

25:08 How humbling is it that Jesus, the beginning and the ruler of creation, the one who stands above the kings of this world, he is the one standing outside the door of our life and patiently knocking and calling and waiting. Surely it should be the other way around. but yet this is the way it is and when we do open the door he comes in and he brings the food and he brings everything else and he humbles himself not to invite us to his table but to come and sit at ours and sort of get this picture of opening the front door and Jesus is there with all these carrier bags and I invite him in and he doesn't make any reference to how long he's been waiting outside and he comes in and he sets out the food he prepares the meal and in the other bags he's got the gold and he's got the white clothes and he's got the the healing salve for my eyes and he draws a chair close in his grace and he sits down and he eats with me and he talks and he listens

26:35 and he enjoys intimacy with me and I with him. And he tells us about our future then. To the one who is victorious, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne just as I was victorious and sat down with my father on his throne. What does victory look like? It looks like accepting what he has to offer and relinquishing what we have and admitting that it's useless. That's all that victory is. And so he says, as we eat with him, you think this is good? Listen, let me tell you, because you've invited me to come and sit at your table and eat with with you as your savior and Lord, because you've given up yourself sufficiently and placed your trust in my sufficiency for you, I will invite you to sit with me on my throne, just as the father invited me as a victor to sit on his.

27:40 You've got yourself so caught up. He might say, with your achievements and your progress and you're proving yourself in this life, but if you could only grasp a little of the authority and the glory that is gonna be yours beside me in eternity, well, a lot of this stuff, you would really not wind yourself up about it just so much. It wouldn't consume you the way it does. You would know that all of this stuff is like dust and will pass away, but you would recognize that the throne you get to share with me is eternal and secure. and then finally whoever has ears we hear for the last time in our series let them hear what the spirit says to the churches and as i was making notes on the on this talk i was imagining standing up here this morning and i was imagining looking out at you all and recognizing that i see so many capable people, so many self-sufficient people, so many who are successful in worldly terms, whether that's, again, in your professional lives or in your personal lives or in academia or whatever it is. There's so many capable, capable people here. You're well-respected in your fields of expertise.

29:14 And in global wealth terms, often when we compare ourselves in terms of whether we are rich, we look up at the people above us and compare with them. But actually, if we compare ourselves at a global level with everybody else in the world, there's no way that we could not say we are rich. We are prosperous. We are in need of nothing. And so the question then comes, it has come to me very sharply with these overlaps in our circumstances with the church in Laodicea. That's the case at the very least. We must allow this letter to search our hearts and lives and ask, is there also any overlap in our lives with their spiritual self-deception and the resulting lukewarmness of their church? His Holy the Holy Spirit must have something to say to us as Glen Abbey Church too, through this letter.

30:12 And that's, I felt that most keenly as I reflect on the whole series. For me, it's the letter to the church in Ephesus. Your first love, the dredging of the sleet and all that sort of stuff, it's that. And then it's this that I felt most keenly. And so as we finish, I just wanna invite you to listen to a few questions that I've been thinking and sort of pondering myself, I suppose, at a personal level. And I've asked these questions in what we have experienced already here this morning, things that we have done together this morning. And hopefully these will make sense. The reason I'm asking them is so that we might prayerfully ponder,

31:08 and so that as we consider our responses to these questions, God might point out to us that there might be something of the Laodicean problem in us that needs repented of. So let me ask you these. I hope that makes sense. We opened this morning by singing a song called God So Loved. And there's a line in that song. It's the last one actually. Bring all your failures, bring your addictions, come lay them down at the foot of the cross.

31:46 Jesus is waiting there with open arms. And as I was reflecting, I realized that when I sing that line, I've almost exclusively sang that line to other people, but not to myself. And the idea that they need to hear that, but I don't, which as I reflect is a sure sign to me, is it not that there is some level of ongoing, self-sufficient self-deception in me that needs challenged and corrected and repented of. As if I have no failures to bring to the cross. As if I have slightly less need of that grace compared to X or Y. What about you? are those lines you think other people need but you don't and if that's a pattern of thinking in you what does that reveal about the Laodicean problem in you?

33:07 What does it reveal about the Laodicean problem in me? Secondly then, later in the service Heather led us in a time of confession not what my hands have done. How familiar, can I ask you, or how alien was a prayer like that to you? How frequently or how rarely do you come to Jesus and confess before him how poor and naked and blind you are without him and how much you need what only he can give you? Is that a daily prayer? Is that a weekly prayer? Is that an annual prayer? Is it there at all?

33:55 And again, what does your response to that say about your relationship with him and about your perspective on yourself? How clearly you're seeing yourself and how clearly you're seeing him. Then thirdly, I suggested that the church in Laodicea wouldn't have any need of a prayer room because no one would ever reckon they need any prayer. So another question might be, do you see asking for prayer as a sign of spiritual weakness or as a sign of spiritual strength? You know, you might say, oh, yeah, it's great. Our church has a prayer room.

34:42 That's for that's for those people that need it. There's definitely a few of them, but I like to work things out myself. I like to work things through myself. I'll sort myself out, thank you very much. What does your perspective and your openness and your willingness to ask for prayer say about maybe some of this problem being in you that needs dealt with. As I invite the band to come out, hopefully they'll hear me in the background there. Let me be clear, I can't answer any of those questions for you.

35:24 I can only answer them for myself. And again, I say these questions have hit me hard. I don't rule myself out of responding to them and seeing the problems in my own heart with them that need dealt with. But if you have looked into the mirror of the letter to this church and you've seen something in yourself, of yourself, sorry, in it as I have, then there is a danger here. And again, it's a danger. I say to myself, I hear Christ's rebuke and then what happens to me, I end up starting to wallow in that. Beating myself up. horrified at myself that that's the way I am but you see this letter doesn't stop at Christ's rebuke it only starts there yes it's there to wake us up but we cannot stop there

36:18 it's there to wake us up not so that we might wallow but so that we might step into his invitation of a fresh outpouring of his grace that we might let go of the riches of our own self-sufficiency so that we might reach out with empty hands and receive his riches, his eternal treasure, his white clothes to cover our shameful nakedness, his salve for our eyes. That we might see, yes, how wretched we are, but not stop there. But to hear his words, those whom I love, I rebuke and discipline. I love you, that's why I say this. So that we might open the door to our ever-loving and ever-patient Savior. Do you see how patient he is? And so that we might enjoy intimacy with him and then as we enjoy that intimacy with him, we seek to obey him and we find that as we listen, there is life. but it begins in relationship.

37:34 It begins with an open door. Let's not simply listen to Jesus' rebuke, but listen to his counsel, his call, and his promise. It's vital and crucial that we do all of that and take all of that together. Accept the rebuke, but don't stop there. Accept to his counsel and his call and his promise for the future. Can I invite you to stand and we'll pray together. And so, Father, we say we are sorry for how we've allowed ourselves to slip into saying to ourselves, I am rich, I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.

38:31 we are sorry where this has become the the unconscious inner monologue of our hearts and we come to you this morning and we confess then that we are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked and we ask with hands that are empty and open that you would deal with our lukewarmness by giving us your gold, your white clothes, your salve for our eyes. We repent and we ask you to refine our faith. Heal our sight. Fill us by your spirit.

39:37 Show us where the repentance called for in this letter needs to be applied in our lives. And help us relinquish our self-sufficiency and reach out and ask for that in humility and receive that through your word, through your spirit. Receive that through your church. In Jesus' name, amen. you