Revelation 3:14-22

Friends, today, the final church, the letters to the seven churches, will be in Revelation chapter 3:14-22

I'm going to start reading at verse 14, “And to the church in Laodicea. There is an outline in your bulletin. If you want to follow on that, you're welcome to follow. And then on the back of the outline is an overview of what Jesus says about himself. And we're going to look at that at the very end of the message.

To: The angel of the Church in Laodicea:

So Revelation chapter 3:14. “To the Angel of the church in Laodicea write: The Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God says this. I know your deeds, that you are neither hot nor cold. I wish you were cold or hot. So because you are lukewarm and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. Because you say I am rich and I become wealthy and I have need for nothing. And you do not know that you are wretched and miserable

and poor and blind and naked. I advise you, (Jesus advises the Laodicean believers), to buy from me gold refined by fire, so that you may become rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself, and that the shame of your nakedness will not be revealed. And I have salve to anoint your eyes so

that you may see those whom I love I reprove and discipline. Therefore be zealous and repent. (20) Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come into him and will dine with him and he with me. He overcomes. I will grant him to sit down with me on my throne, as I also overcame and sat down with my Father on his throne. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”

Father, we today want to hear what you're saying to Laodicea, which obviously, of course, Father, you meant for us, for us as a body, for us as individuals. Let us hear what your Holy Spirit is saying to us personally. So we entrust our time to you. Please guide us in it. We pray in Christ's name, Amen.

Friends, I think there is a terrific curse to being rich. The Richest man I ever personally knew ended up in. Federal prison. I think there's a terrific curse to being extremely talented. Most talented man I personally know ended up arrogant. And extremely unlikable. I think there is a curse to being super

intelligent. Most intelligent man I ever knew ended up depressed, Angry, and extremely lonely. I think there's quite a curse to being super athletic. Most athletic men I personally knew played in Major League Baseball for 16 years. Went to high school with him. He ended up arrogant, lost, and extremely unlikable. I think there's a curse to being extremely beautiful. Most beautiful woman I ever knew personally. Ended up married to me.

So I rest my case. I rest my case. Now friends, I have obviously cherry picked these people. Not every rich person ends up arrogant and unlikable. Not every intelligent person ends up depressed and alone. I've cherry picked these people.

But this passage is about the fact that it is very, very true that you can be so talented, so rich and so beautiful that you end up thinking I don't need help,

I don't need other people, and I certainly don't need God. There is a curse to having too many personal resources. I think the core issue we're going to talk about here is that we need to jettison our self-sufficiency and our complacency and our pride and replace it with something else.

Genesis self-sufficiency, complacency and pride. Now you may be sitting

here thinking, hey I know someone who needs to hear this. In fact, I know two people who need to hear it, me and you. We need to hear it. This is not about whoever we're thinking about out there. This is about us. God brought us into this room to look at this passage and say what is there that I need to adjust?

There is a huge risk to self-sufficiency, giftedness, beauty and wealth to the Angel of the church in Laodicea.

So this is near the city Of Denzeli, Turkey. If we could have a map, please, I would appreciate that. 40 miles southeast of Philadelphia, about 80 miles to the east of Laodicea. And if you remember, we have gone around the clock to all seven of these churches, where the last church today in the city has 650,000 people. At that time, Laodicea had about 80,000 people and it was considered the wealthiest city in Asia Minor.

The map you were looking at is about Asia Minor, the wealthiest city in Asia Minor for a variety of reasons. They were very famous for black woolen clothing. They were very famous for an eye salve that was supposed to heal your eye problems. They were famous for banking. In fact, at one time their city was wiped out by an earthquake, I mean leveled, and they refused help from the Roman government and they rebuilt it themselves. Very wealthy, very self sufficient.

From: Jesus the Son of God:

People here is what the Son of God says to them verse 14, “From Jesus the son of God he says first of all. I am the Amen”. The word means so shall it be, or let it be so? When we're saying Amen, we pray a prayer, we say in Jesus name meaning Lord, we're coming to you in the name of our Savior because we don't have personal merit. We're saying Amen, which we're saying let this happen. So shall it be. And in this text says Jesus is the “let this happen of God”. He is the one who accomplishes everything that God said he will do. 191 Old Testament prophecies directly fulfilled in the person of Jesus. In the New Testament, he's the one who accomplishes what God promised.

He is the one who carries out what God said would happen. If you need something in your life, Jesus is the one to turn to. I didn't say if you want something. He gives us stuff we want, but there's the stuff we need primarily.

2nd Peter 1:3.”I have given you everything you need for life and godliness.” I have everything I need. I can't say that situation was too tough. That person

was too unkind. I have everything I need if I will accept it to do what God calls me to do. Psalm 138:8 “The Lord will accomplish what concerns you. Your loving kindness, O Lord, is everlasting. Do not forsake the work of your

hands.” The Lord will accomplish what concerns us. And I've got a lot that concerns me right now and it's way beyond my ability. I have no magic wand. I have to say, Father, I need You to help me.

He is the one who gets it done. He's the ultimate go to being.

He is also #2 the faithful and true witness.

A witness just testifies to what they saw, and Jesus testifies. And he's always faithful, never sloppy. He always remembers what happened. He always knows what to say. Jesus is so faithful. This is like having a teenage boy who every morning gets up cheerful every morning, brushes his teeth every morning, has his homework done every morning, goes to school on time every day, drives his sister to piano lessons every day, cleans his room everyday. Kicks out the garbage every day. Does the lawn like he should. He played in Major League Baseball for 25 years and he bats 1000. Like in 5000 plate appearances, he

never failed to get a hit. That's the kind of God we're talking about here. That's the kind of being who is faithful. He always gets it done, and he's also truthful.

He's a truthful witness. He never lies, he never shades the truth, he never leaves stuff out. He never changes the order of events. He never says something that's designed to distract us from the truth. He's always saying what is true. It's one of the beautiful things about Jesus. He tells us what is true.

 I have a wife who tells me what is true. And she keeps doing it, no matter how much I pressure her to stop. It's a glorious thing. It took me a while to get used to it, but now it's a glorious thing. We need to be like Jesus and just let's say what's true, and then we will keep saying it even if we're pressured to stop saying it.

He is the true witness #3 He's the beginning of the creation of God.He is the one who is the creative agent in the work of God now, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. All three are credited with creation, but Jesus is a core creative agent in the beginning of creation. This does not mean he was the first one created. That's so incompatible with the rest of the Bible, especially with John,

Colossians 1:15 and 16. “Jesus is the image of the invisible God, the first born of all creation. For by him all things were created, both in heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things were created through Him and for Him. He is the first born.” That doesn't mean he's the first one to be born from God, as in the oldest child. It means he is unique. He is the set of one. There is no one like him. You don't know anybody like Jesus because he's the only one in that set. He's the only one that all like him.

You can't have another one like him. He's the only one. So verse 15, Jesus says, here's what I know about you and here's what I think about you. He's all knowing. Obviously He says to the Laodicean people, I know your deeds and

your deeds show that you are lukewarm. Your deeds are lackadaisical and they show to me that you have a tepid heart. You're not on fire for me or for my things. If you were here last week, Steven said.

There's three main issues that are addressed in these seven churches:

One of them is a lack of passion. You just don't care enough.

One of them is false doctrine. You believe wrong things, and one of them is tolerance. You let stuff slide that you shouldn't let slide. And in this case, he's saying the problem with his church is you have tepid hearts. You have no passion. He says I wish you were cold or hot.

That doesn't mean I wish you were stone cold against me or you were flaming hot for me. It couldn't mean that because he doesn't wish for anybody to be stone cold against him. It has to mean something different than that. So he says. I'm simply saying if you were hot. Like hot water, you'd be good for doing the dishes and for taking a shower, and for cleaning up stuff. You'd have some value if you were cold. Like cold water, you'd be good for making iced tea, and you'd be good for waking yourself up, and you'd be good for soaking a throbbing hand. If you were either hot or cold, you would be useful for one or the other, but because you were lukewarm, you're not good for either one.

Higher Opolis was maybe 15 miles away from Laodicea and was famous for Hot Springs. People would go there and soak in the Hot Springs to get healed. But the river flowed down 15 miles to Laodicea. And when the river got from the hot down to Laodicea, it was lukewarm, wasn't good, didn't help you medicinally when you sat in it and nobody wanted to drink it. So it was not hot. It was not cold. And he's saying there's so many times with these friends.

Where the local physical realities of the place relate to the spiritual realities. And they know we've got a lukewarm river coming through here. And he says, yeah, you know what? You have a lukewarm river and you have lukewarm hearts. Your hearts are not what they need to be. They are too tepid. They don't help anything because of that. Verse 16, ”I'll spit you out of my mouth.”

Now it's a problematic verse because people think, OK, this is God going to reject them. They're going to lose their salvation. And the answer, of course, is no, there's too many passages. We talked about, I think, always interpret the unclear verses in light of the clear verses. And I gave a handout two or three weeks ago with a whole whole discussion of why you just can't lose your salvation. There's too much that supports our security in Christ. It's more related, I think. Down to the verse that talks about verse 19. “That those whom I love, I will discipline.” So when he says I spit you out of my mouth, he's simply saying it's like us taking a drink of lukewarm water thinking it was going to be cold. And oath, it's terrible. I don't like it, it's tepid. I'm going to get rid of it. Meaning he is so discouraged with our lack of passion. It's an anthropomorphism. I'm discouraged with your lack of passion.

A writer named Derek Kidner, he's passed away now. Brilliant Old Testament

scholar. I wish he'd written a commentary on every book of the Old Testament.

Whenever I'm preaching a book from the Old Testament that he wrote a commentary on, he's where I start. He's a very brilliant man, he said in his commentary on Ecclesiastes.” When you learn to laugh at everything, you're soon left with nothing worth the bother of laughing about. Triviality is more

stifling than tragedy, and the shrug is the most hopeless of all comments on life.

These people are saying it doesn't matter, I don't care. The shrug is the most hopeless of all comments on life. I wish you were hot or cold.

Verse 17. Here's what else I know about you #2 You think you're rich, wealthy, and need nothing. In other words, you have the curse of riches. You are confused that your resources don't come from your bank account, they come from the God of the universe.

One of the most helpful verses to me is Proverbs 30:8 & 9

The person writing this praises God, “Remove far from me vanity and lies. Give me neither poverty nor riches. Feed me with my prescribed portion of food. Let me have exactly what I need, not too much, not too little, lest I be full and deny you, and say, Who is the Lord?”

Or lest I be poor and steel, and take the name of the Lord in vain. These people thought they were rich. They didn't need anything, but they were spiritually, they were absolutely bankrupt. They absolutely had had nothing. And the structure of this text makes it clear that they were. Not only were they rich, but the structure of the sentence makes it clear that they consider themselves to be self-made people. They wear bootstrap rich. They didn't inherit. They weren't a trust fund baby to inherit it. They just made it happen for themselves. And that's the worst kind of rich. Pride. So they had drifted into complacency #3 here's what else I know about you. You think you're rich and have needed nothing. But actually verse 17, you're wretched, miserable, poor, blind and naked.

You are spiritually bankrupt. You don't have anything. I mean, this is stacking up five different words. It's like piling on wretched, afflicted, wretched or toiling miserable to be pitied poor. You are reduced to begging blind spiritually and mentally. You're living in utter darkness, naked. Your spiritual, relational, mental, mental poverty is so amazing. It's open to everybody. You're the only one who can't see that you're bankrupt. You think you're rich? Jesus said. No, you're bankrupt. Here's their assessment. I'm rich, I'm wealthy, I don't need anything.

Here is Jesus' assessment. You're an utter abject poverty. French Gauna, you know, there's places in Africa where they literally take dirt and mix it with water and make a little cake like this and they feed it to their children because they're so hungry that they want something in their stomach. It's unfathomable. That's where these people were. They were eating dirt and they

thought they were extremely rich. Our challenge is when I look at the word of God and say what's really true about me. When I look at the word of God and let it comment on where I stand and not make myself the commentator on where I stand. Sometimes I can get to thinking, you know, all of us, I'm a

big deal in this little town.

Well #1 it's a little town. Number two, I'm not a big deal. We need to have God's assessment which says no, I'm a big deal in the love of the Father and I

want to be a servant in my little town.

Need to understand who I am. Verse 18, Here's what I, Jesus, am advising you. He says I want you to buy some different stuff than what you're buying now. It doesn't mean take out some cash and get something different. He's talking about making a self sacrifice, making a self-assessment so that you make a spiritual gain get some awareness of your ridiculous dependence on God

#1. I want you To buy gold from me, refined by fire, and then you will be rich. By refined gold. What is refined gold? Let me suggest to you that it's refined faith.

Trust, 1st Peter 1:6&7. “In this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you've been distressed by various trials, so that the proof of your faith being more precious than gold, which is perishable even though tested by fire. May be found to result in the praise and glory

and honor at the revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's more valuable to have faith that's tested by fire than to have a stack of gold friends in Eagle. They just built a brand new huge, massive building on Old State, which is a depository for precious metals. It's a massive building and this company is three stories tall and a massive vault underneath it. And you can go there and store your precious metals, or you can buy precious metals from them or sell them to them. It would be better.

To have a trust in God than to have everything stacked in their basement.

It would be so much better. Please understand what is valuable

#2 He says, buy white garments from me so it would be clothed and not utterly naked. Instead of buying this beautiful black woolen clothing, buy white garments from me the white garments. In other words, live a life of righteous conduct.

Revelation 19:8. “It was given to her, that is the bride of Christ, to clothe herself in fine linen, bright and white, for the linen is the righteous acts of the of Saints.”

#3 Buy from me, eye salve, buy from me the truth so that you can really see who you are and what you need. Look into the book, look into the word of God. It's sharper, active than any 2 edged swords, piercing between the division of soul and spirit. It looks right into me and says Dave this is not true. You need to understand what is true

#4 He says understand that those whom I love I also discipline verse 19. “God reproves the people whom he loves. He does not let us go indefinitely in our

sin. He comes in, he picks us up by the lapels, He shakes us and he says, stop it, turn around, do something different than you've been doing.

Hebrews 12:7-10, He says, those whom I love I discipline. I see so many people, friends, and you're going to say yes? It's because you're 72. You think this way. I see so many people who are raising a Prince or a Princess, just give them everything they want. Let them have anything they want. Never discipline them. They're just training the child to be royalty. There's a book out

literally called Raising Royalty about the gist of the foolishness of a child who's used to getting everything they want and who is never disciplined.

And God is not that kind of a father, he said. I'd rather have Dave be mature.

Then think himself royalty and get everything he wants. God disciplines those whom he loves. Verse 19, “Be zealous and repent.” Burn or boil. Boil with desire for the good pursuit. Repent. Have you ever had a friend who was so zealous about something you just got tired of being around them? I mean, every time you're with them, they want to talk about gold watches, these old antique gold watches. I had a friend like that. Or every time they're within there, they want to talk about antiques and their house looks like a like

a museum. Or every time you're with them, they want to talk about guns, or they want to talk about politics, or they want to talk about whatever. It just gets draining. It's just ridiculous. So it's like, I don't even want to be here because I know in four seconds we're going to be into antique watches.

Hey, I've got 1. I don't care. I've got other stuff, you know, I don't want to be

as zealous for that. And he is saying to us, why don't you be zealous for God himself? Why don't you be zealous for the work of God? That doesn't mean you can't care about antiques, watches or the Texas Rangers especially doesn't mean that. But let's save our zeal for the God of the universe. The command is to be zealous for God and zealously is the opposite of complacency. Don't

be the person with the shrug. And then verse 19, he says, here's the last thing I'm telling you, repent. Change your mind. Change your mind at a heart level about who you've been, about your complacency. About the fact that you don't care about God and his book and his mission and his people and lost people.

Change your mind about that, friends. When I pastored in Idaho Falls, we had a guy, his wife came to church faithfully. He came once in a while, and he was a believer, utterly complacent. He went to work, came home, ate supper, watched TV, and went to bed. That's all he did for years, tore his wife up. And after I moved away, he sometimes went down the road. Changed his ways.

He somehow got fired up for God and he retired and he moved to Texas and went to seminary for four years, and then he sold everything he had except for cardboard boxes worth. Then he and his wife moved to China to teach English as a second language and share Christ, and then they got kicked out of China. And so then they started another ministry, itinerant in the States, and they're still going at it. They're as old as me and they're driving around the States with itinerant ministry.

Now my application to that story is not that. Quit your job, sell your house, sell your stuff, go to seminary and move to China. That is not the application. The application is this. People who are zealous for God are having 48,000 times

more fun than others. They are 48,000 times more useful than others. They are 48,000 times happier than the complacent people. Where did you get that number, Dave? You know where I got that number? I just made that up.

But there's so much joy, it's so much more meaningful to be involved in this stuff of God.

Verse 20.”Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come into him and I will dine with him. This verse is primarily been focused on evangelism in the past and God has used it in

evangelism. No doubt there are countless people who were either taught this verse or read this verse who thought, OK, I will open the door of my heart

to Jesus, I'll trust Christ, I'll be forgiven. But this is not an evangelistic verse. Now God does stuff with stuff that you know, he's not cramped. His style's not cramped at all. It's a evangelistic verse. It's written to believers. These are Christians. So he's saying something different to them. He's offering them

fellowship. He's offering them a close relationship. He's offering them to become zealous to come in and have a meal with him when? I seek him. I become someone who has this awesome fellowship with the God of the universe.

There was something so powerful, friends, about eating with one another. You may have had a time where you had friends over. It's Friday night. Nobody has to be up the next morning for school or work. Everybody shows up. You make appetizers together. Kids are running around the backyard. You eat together, you have some dessert together. You sit on the back patio for hours and just love and enjoy the fellowship. Everybody's enjoying everybody. Nobody has

anywhere to be.

It's the fellowship of eating together and Jesus is saying to us, I want to invite you into fellowship with me personally. I want you to come to me as a person who has nowhere else to be. The God of the universe wants fellowship with us. It's amazing. It's amazing.

Matthew or Mark 3:14, Jesus appointed 12 that they might be with him.

And he could send them out to preach. The first point of discipleship is to

be with Jesus. Get to know Jesus. And then abide in Jesus, and then be

matured by Jesus, and then be useful to Jesus. He appointed 12 that they might be with him.

The God of the universe wants to be with us. Here's the problem. We're too busy to be with him. We never have a time in life when we don't have somewhere to be. We're just packing it in. I grew up in the North and as a child in the north we had this glorious thing called the snow day. You wake up in the morning, there's a raging Blizzard outside. Your mom turns on the

radio. You're sitting there praying. Oh, dear Jesus, please let them read. Cody Independent School District is closed today. You know, I didn't know Christ, and I was fervent in prayer. And then the school was closed and snow day.

Go back to bed for a while, play in the snow for a while, have fun for a while, take a nap for a while, maybe at night. At night, do the homework I was supposed to do yesterday and it's a snow day.

God gives us 52 snow days a year. Every Sunday or Saturday, whatever day you choose to say it's my snow day. I can worship, I can create, I can nap, I can fellowship, I can relate, I can rest, I can ignore my To Do List. Today

it's a snow day. When I have a snow day, I have the opportunity to be close to the God of the universe.

Verse 21 Here's what Jesus promised you as overcomers. I am going to let you sit down on my throne. Now, that does not mean, friends, that we're going to be worshiped. That would not only be stupid, it would be sinful. I am not a being worthy of worship. It's quite clear to me. None of us are. To sit on the throne with Jesus means that we are invited into ruling with him in the millennial Kingdom, in eternity. We are invited into ruling with God, which is mind boggling. I would never invite me. To ruling I would never but I won't read them. Too bad I have 7 passages here that talk about us being given ruling responsibility. Amazing thing he does.

So listen Laodicea. listen to what the Spirit says to the churches.

My dad used to take me hunting when I was a boy. We'd be walking along and he stopped listening. Listen. Because he heard something. He heard something. He had great ears. He heard something, listen.

Listen Faith community Bible Church, we find real life in time and eternity.

In relationship with Jesus and in nearness to Jesus. That's where real life is. It's not in being self-made, it's not in having money, it's not in being competent, it's not in being well known in real life. Is given to the people who trust Christ and then spend time with Christ.

Listen, FCBC, to what the Spirit says to the churches. Revelation 3:20, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone will open the door, I will come into him, and I will fellowship with him and He with me.” I'd like to eat together with you when none of us have anywhere to be. I want to close this by saying in the back of your outline today there is a list of the accomplishments of Jesus.

Steven said last week he gave him a cover letter. And if you read this cover letter, you'd say we need to look at this resume. This is stunning. And on the back of it is everything that he said about himself. He is the most compelling man, whoever lived and wise people seek him, trust him and fellowship with him. The God of the universe wants to spend time with us.

It's unbelievable to me. The God of the universe wants to spend time with us.