The Lukewarm Church - Part 2 - Revelation 3:14-22

Welcome to God First with Brian C. Thomas, a program committed to encouraging you to put God first while viewing life through the window of the Bible. Now, in honor of the one and only true God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, let's join Brian C. Thomas for today's message.

Brian C. Thomas and I am sitting across the table from my lovely wife and cohost, Denita. How are you feeling today? Pretty good.

I'm blessed. All right. Still enjoying the series on the letters to the seven churches? I sure am.

All right. So we are concluding today our series on the letters to the seven churches in Revelation, and we are looking at the final church, the lukewarm church, and we've already had part one. So today we're wrapping up with part two, and that saying out there, you save the best for last. But our Lord did not save the best for last as this is the worst church, by far the worst church of the seven. And we saw in part one in which he was given a lot of condemnations. He was really letting the church have it. And we have to remind ourselves, this was an actual church that existed in Asia Minor during the biblical days, the early centuries.

And the message, though, still applies to us today. And so we're going to see what the Lord has to say to that church and what he has to say to us today as well. So again, we're looking at the church at Laodicea, the lukewarm church.

Part two will come in from Revelation chapter three, verses 18 through 22. And as we look at this church, we find a graphic prophecy of the modern apostate church. This is a church that when we look around society today, there's a lot of apostasy that's going on. There are a lot of things that are not of the Bible. And this church here was located again in Asia Minor, a physical real location.

It was located about 40 miles from Ephesus, another church that we've looked at in this series. And again, it's the church that represents the time period, the dispensation from nineteen hundred A.D. to the tribulation. And again, this is the church that we see all around us. So again, Jesus Christ was giving condemnation to this church when we looked at part one. Now he begins to give us counsel. So let's start by looking at Revelation three, verse 18.

Yes. And it reads, I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire that you may be rich and white garments that you may be clothed, that the shame of your nakedness may not may not be revealed and anoint your eyes with eyesalve that you may see. So as we look at that verse, one of the things that jumps out at me when we look at society today, a lot of people are focused on riches, but not from a spiritual standpoint, but material. People are trying to get as much money as they possibly can. People are in the hustle to get a new house.

The bigger and better the house can be. That is what people's focus is. But our focus should be on the eternal. And even as I look at a lot of churches today, there is not much talk and focus on eternal.

There is so much focus on your best life here and now and trying to hold on and to grab what's in this life. But the best is yet to come for us as believers in Jesus Christ, that is those of us who have accepted him as Lord and Savior. And so he is saying here to test him and buy from him gold that has been refined in the fire.

And that gold is refined by the fire burns off the impurities. And so eternal riches can only come through the shed blood of Jesus Christ. And that is why we're always stressing to accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior if you've never accepted him, because eternal riches is going to outweigh anything that you can get on this side of life.

You may have a million dollars, two million, a billion dollars, but someday that will run out. But eternal life is going to continue on and on. We look at First Peter, chapter one, verse seven. It tells us that the trial of your faith being much more precious than of gold that parishes, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ. And I just love thinking about the appearing of Christ. And when we think about our Lord, the righteousness that is required to come into the presence of God can only be attained through Jesus Christ. And when we look at Revelation, chapter three, verse five, as we looked at earlier in this series, we found that the white represents the righteousness that we receive through accepting Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.

Yes. And then in the part where it says, anoint your eyes with Asav that you may see. We need spiritual sight that comes only from from Jesus Christ, not earthly vision. And in First Corinthians two, verse 14, the Bible says, But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him.

Nor can he know them because they are spiritually discerned. And this was what we often think about when I think about often when I look at what is taking place in society today. When we look at people that are getting so bent out of shape, they accuse people of racism over everything.

It seems there's just so much conflict in protesting. And it just seems to me like people make these assumptions and they're just running on speculations and not the truth. And it makes me think to myself, people just do not see they're blinded by the truth because Jesus Christ says he is the truth, the way in the life. And if people don't have Jesus Christ, therefore they don't have the Holy Spirit. They're not going to see the truth.

So therefore, they go on deception, they go by lies, they go by feelings, they go by emotions. And so Jesus Christ is saying, anoint your eyes with Asav. And when I think about Asav, I think about the fact that I have very sensitive eyes.

I tell people all the time, I rather take a needle, give me a shot all day, every day, rather than mess with my eyes because I can't stand going to the eye doctor and getting eye drops put in and all of that. So but he's saying here to anoint your eyes, because even though those eye drops may not be comfortable, but it gives you vision. It allows you to be able to see. And even is used as a treatment for people when they're unconscious.

They'll drop something in their eyes to help them to become conscious again, to become alert, to become awake. And so Jesus Christ is saying, anoint your eyes with Asav so that you can see so that you can see the things that are of him. See the things that are of the spirit. And we talk about being alert. We need to be eternal minded and clothed in righteousness.

Think about the future and look forward in our future. And it's like Jesus is telling the church at that time and us, I have everything you need, eternal, pure riches. I will open your spiritual eyes to see things that those of the world cannot see. Don't you want to be in the know and have God guide you and what you see?

And that's what he's saying. I have everything for you. But you have to want that.

Yeah. And as you read that, it made me think about my grandmother who passed away last year at 98 years old. And she used to say to me how rich she was. But grandma was not rich materially. But she would always say, I have Jesus Christ. And because I have Jesus Christ, I have all the riches, anything.

There's nothing else that can exceed that. And she would say that all the time. And I could tell she knew it and she meant it in her heart.

It wasn't just something she was saying to be saying it. And a lot of us, though, need to get that through, because sometimes we say it with our mouths, but we still look around at our lives and we'll say there are things that we want. We're not content. We need to be like the apostle Paul, who said he learned to be content in all things. And when you have Jesus Christ, you are rich. That is all that you need. He'll supply all your wants and he'll supply all your needs. Yes, that was well said.

Jesus goes on the council and he says in Revelation three, verse 19. As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten, therefore be zealous and repent. You know, as parents, we don't enjoy rebuking and chastening the children. I don't enjoy it because I know that it causes them some emotional and, you know, pain when you're chasing them.

It can hurt their feelings. But the reason that we do it is because when they are doing something that is not good, something that if that behavior continues even into adulthood is going to lead to hard times for them in their lives. And so we do it out of love.

We do it because we want what's best for them in the long run. And that is what we have to remember with Jesus Christ is the same thing. He chastens us because he loves us. And people sometimes ask the question, why would God loving God allow certain things to happen, suffering in life?

But sometimes it's because he is chasing us. He's trying to get us to turn away from our sins. Now, that's not to say that every time you suffer, if you get sick or illness or death, that's not to say that as always means that you are living in sin and that you are being rebuked. But it could be times in which he is going to allow you to not be comfortable so that you will turn away from your sin. And he's saying here to repent, repent earnestly and to repent sincerely.

Yes. And I look at where in the word it says, therefore be zealous and repent. And I think about what zealous means. And of course, it means showing zeal.

When you think about zeal, I looked up and I found synonyms for the term zeal. And I found that it said fiery, passionate, devoted, committed, dedicated, enthusiastic and eager. And so these are things that he wanted the church to be fiery and passionate about about him, about living for him. And that's how we should be. We should be devoted and passionate and committed and repent.

So those are things that that Jesus expects of us. And it makes me think when you say that that some people, they'll have taken this to the extreme or taken this the wrong way. And you see it in churches where there's entertainment going on and preachers are up there and what they call being fiery. And they're up there whooping and they're up there hollering.

And they have this certain cadence and rhythm almost sound like they're rapping or trying to put on a hip hop song or something. And it's to get people stirred up. Right.

To get people excited, to get people shaking their heads and, you know, just all of this stuff to show that it's like a performance. But church is not a performance, but we are to be passionate. We are to go into church. We should go in there with our hearts and our minds on Jesus Christ.

Right. We should go in there with smiles on our faces. We should have joy.

We should not go in there downtrodden. It should it should be a joy and a happiness that the world sees and they should know that we have the spirit of Jesus Christ living in us. But it's so important that this is one of my pet peeves that people do not go to church to be entertained.

Right. Pastors, preachers, we are not there to entertain people. We are there to bring people to Jesus Christ. And once people have came to Jesus Christ, we're there to disciple them, to get them to understand what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ. And when you have the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit is going to give you all of that joy and that passion in a natural, spiritual way. And therefore, you will be zealous.

You will be enthusiastic. But it's being led by the Holy Spirit. And when you're being led by the Holy Spirit and you have that commitment, you are going to be convicted of things that you need to repent of. And that's why it's important to have Jesus Christ accept him in your heart, because then you receive the Holy Spirit and you get refilled and refilled and refilled each and every day as you request that Holy Spirit from him. And that helps you to be zealous and repent. But of course, this church lacked that.

And so he told them, this is what you need. And just one more thing on that note is that we definitely are not against people being excited. If you feel the Holy Spirit hits you and it makes you want to dance, if it makes you want to shout, lift your arms, cry, whatever it is, then yes, you go by the leading of the Holy Spirit. But what we mean is you don't go in there already with the pre-planned act that you're going to put on, that at a certain point in the service, you're going to start saying certain things and doing certain things. That is not the Holy Spirit.

Yeah, hooping, hooping and hollering. No, we don't want to do that. OK, I'm sorry. He goes on a council in Revelation three, verse 20, and the Bible says, Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him and he with me. Yeah, when this I see this verse, you know, it makes me think it brings a lot of sadness to me. To me, this is one of the saddest verses in the Bible, because Jesus Christ is giving us a picture of how he's standing outside the door. And knocking and he's standing outside of this church, this lukewarm church at Laodicea, and he's wanting to come in. But they are so preoccupied with entertainment and things that are not of him that they are not paying attention.

They look out and they may even see Jesus and they're not interested in letting him in. And I think about Jesus and what he does for us every day. He's constantly interceding on our behalf as the devil is accusing us falsely.

He's interceding on our behalf. And that's on top of the fact that he died on the cross. He gave his life so that we could have eternal life. He was perfect. He had no sin and he stood in our place and how we should have suffered.

He did it for us. And he's saying, I want to come in. But there are so many that will not open the door and let Jesus in. He's given this figuratively, knocking at the door, but he's knocking at our hearts. And he's addressing here the minority that is those who reject false doctrines. And as we look at Proverbs, chapter four, verse twenty three, it tells us, keep your heart with all diligence for out of it spring the issues of life.

So it is so important. And I want to encourage you today, if Jesus Christ is knocking on your door, listen to him and open and let him in. Because when you accept Jesus Christ as savior, there is nothing else that you have to worry about. There's nothing else that you're in need of.

You will have eternal life and all the riches that this world cannot bring. Don't go away. We're going to come right back and continue looking at the lukewarm church. You are tuned in to the God First program.

You can also sign up for our monthly newsletter and visit our Web store. So please visit us at God first dot org. Now, let's return to the conclusion of today's message. Welcome back to the God First program.

My name is Brian Thomas, and I am joined by my co-host and wife, Danita. And we are looking at the lukewarm church, the church at Laodicea. And before the break, we were talking about the fact that Jesus Christ is knocking on our doors.

And he wants us to let him in. But before we continue, I want to share with you. If you want to reach us, if you want to hear the other messages in this series, you can reach us online at God first dot org. That's God, the number one S T dot org. You can also write us at God First Bible Fellowship P.O.

Box 266 Knightdale, North Carolina, two seven five four five. All right. So let's look again at Revelation Chapter three, verse 20. Jesus Christ is saying he's standing at the door knocking, but is he going to force himself on anyone? No, it's so awesome that the Lord seeks us and we are blessed to have him seeking us. But it's important to know that Christ does not force himself upon mankind at all. He's not begging and pleading with you, but he waits patiently for the invitation to come in. So you have a role to play.

Yeah. And he has the power. If he wanted to force himself on us, he could.

He could just force everybody to believe him. But Jesus wants true love. And it's not true love when you force someone to accept you.

And you look at human beings today in romantic relationships and you'll find sometimes where a person cannot accept the fact that someone does not desire them. And so they'll force that person. They'll force themselves on them. They'll threaten them. If you leave me or if you don't accept my invitation, you'll they'll they'll physically harm the person.

And that's not real love. No one is going to be fulfilled by that. But Jesus Christ is going to wait patiently and he knocks on our doors. And again, he's speaking figuratively, but he knocks on us on our doors through his word.

There are people who will say, well, I want to hear from God, but it seems like God never speaks to me. Well, he's given us this Bible. Sixty six books in which he is speaking to us.

Open it and read it. Read it from Genesis all the way through Revelation. There are people who skip the Book of Revelation.

They say is too scary or too hard to understand the word that you are looking for in your life. The answer might be in Revelation. He speaks to us through his word in the Bible. He speaks to us through other people. He speaks to us through the Holy Spirit convicting us when we are not living right. And then he speaks to us through circumstances of life. Sometimes people will have these near death experiences and God has given them a chance to get right and to come with him, to come to him. And so he's doing all these things because he desires fellowship with us. We also should desire fellowship with our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Yes. And I like how some people call the Bible the love letters from God. It's his love letter to us. And he's telling us about himself and what he how he feels for us and how he wants to guide us.

So I like that. I'm calling it the love letter, love letters from God. And I love how God always seeks us, as I mentioned earlier, despite ourselves, despite our sinfulness. And when he says if and when it says if anyone hears my voice, you have to hear him to know he's there knocking. So things like sin, rebellion, lawlessness, all of those things can drown his voice out and you won't hear him.

And absolutely everyone has a personal responsibility to open the door when Jesus announces himself. But you must have a desire to hear his voice. He seeks you.

But you have to seek him to be able to be attentive to his voice. He's not going to sit down. I know it mentioned that he'll dine with you. He's not going to sit down with someone who doesn't desire his company.

Yes. And so as we move on in Revelation three, verse 21, this is the challenge. He's he's making a challenge. And he says to him who overcomes, I will grant to sit with me on my throne as I also overcame and sat down with my father on his throne. Yeah, this is a great passage when you think about the fact that you will sit with Jesus Christ on the throne.

I mean, that is something that should get anyone excited. But the only way that can happen is you must be born again. Nicodemus went to Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ said, Nicodemus, you must be born again. It's not about having all this Bible knowledge. Reading and studying the Bible is good. I study the Bible. We are definitely students of the Bible. We love apologetics.

We love Bible prophecy. But having that without being a born being born again is going to do you no good. You have to accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior and be born again. And that is how you can be an overcomer. And by being an overcomer, he promises that you will rule and reign with him in eternity. And so he's given us this challenge and it's a challenge to faithfulness so that you can sit on the throne just as he sat on the throne with the father.

Yes. And when he says that we will rule and reign with him and be we'll be part of his family. He calls on us to come to him to be a part of his family. And when we do that, we can be called sons and daughters of Christ.

And that sounds so good to me. And it puts joy in my heart. Oh, thank you, Jesus. And so he goes on to challenge further in Revelation three, verse 22. And this is a verse we've heard before as we've studied the churches, he says, He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.

Yeah, Jesus concluded every letter with this message. And he's saying, if you have ears and we have ears. And so he say, listen to what I'm saying. And it reminds me of times in which you and I are sitting watching television and you ask me, what did he say?

What did she say on the television? And I'll say, I don't know, because of the fact that I'm sitting there and I hear the noise, but I'm not perceiving it. He says, if you have ears, pay attention to what I'm saying. Hear the words, because the time is near. And as our age, as this current church age draws to a close, the apostasy that we see, the indifference, the deadness that we see in churches is just going to run rampant. The Bible tells us that this is the case.

We're not here being judgmental. The Bible tells us that. But things are being fulfilled just as Christ said they would. So therefore, we should not get disheartened. We should understand that just as Luke 18, verse 8 says, nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he really find faith on the earth? So that tells us that it is going to become more and more scarce to find true believers in Jesus Christ. We see it happening and it's going to continue until he returns. But we must be faithful knowing that this is what he said would be the states of things just before his coming.

Yes. And when I think about the state of things today with COVID and the unrest and things like that, you would think that people would have drawn closer to God. And I'm praying that people have drawn closer to him during this time. But I do think that there are many who have also like gotten to be where they have more indifference. There is more of a lack of interest, less concern or sympathy. And church has become unimportant to people. They've gotten comfortable being in their PJs on Sunday morning to do church online or on the TV or something like that. And I do feel like they get discouraged and lose hope and things like that. So I do feel like the indifference is increasing and that apostasy where they're abandoning their Christian beliefs and going along with these non-biblical ideologies and they're falling away from God, who should be their first love.

And they've gone away from his ways and his instruction. Yeah, well said, because I get that sense, too, that there are a lot of people out there that are content with churches being closed right now. There are a lot of people out there that are content with just watching something on television or online on Sunday morning. It's OK to do that in the sense that if churches are not open. But we should have a burning desire in our hearts, though, to still get together and to worship with our fellow believers and to serve the Lord and not only to get together with fellow believers, but also to reach the laws. But I feel a lot of people have gotten indifferent. Like you said, the apostasy that's there and, you know, even if it means just getting together and have church in a parking lot, I think we could do that.

But there are a lot of people that just seem to be content with just staying home. So that is going to wrap up the series on the letters to the seven churches, a great series. And we're going to get to the action packed stuff that's coming. A lot of people oftentimes want to skip these early chapters when reading Revelation because we want to start to get into all the judgments. And when all the calamities are taking place. But there are so many great things that our Lord had to say to us through these letters to the seven churches. Again, the apostasy is going to continue. The question is, are you truly on the Lord's side?

So before we wrap things up, Denita, do you have any final words on today's message? I would like to first encourage people that if you are attending a church that has gone through this stage of apostasy, fallen away, they've gotten on a bandwagon that they should not be on. I just encourage you to continue to pray and seek the Lord and ask Him for guidance on whether you should go in a different direction so that you can find a church that is going to renounce some of the non-biblical things that are going on and being spread today and get you to a Bible teaching church so that you can receive His instruction. And I just say it's time to repent. In Acts four, verse 12, there is salvation in no one else but Jesus Christ. There is no other name in all of heaven for people to call on to save them. Jesus is the answer for everything that is going on today. So I encourage people to be reconciled to God. First Timothy two, verse five says, For there is only one God and one mediator who can reconcile God and people. He is the man, Jesus Christ, and He stands at the door knock and just make sure you're listening. Do you hear him? If you do, please let him in. Let him into your heart and get into the word of God, that love letter.

Get into that love letter and hear the Lord's message and cling to it and be blessed. Well said. Well said. Well, on that note, we will wrap things up. But I want to leave you with this message that when we look at today, the state of churches, when we look at the lukewarmness, when we look at the apostasy, there are so many churches out there that will not stand on certain issues. They will not speak. There are certain doctrines.

There are certain passages that you do not hear them take a stand on. But we need to be encouraged and don't fall back. Don't be afraid. Don't be fearful because Jesus Christ is with us. Don't be afraid of what the world is going to say or do if you take a stand for what the word of God says.

Yes. So we want to encourage you out there. If you have been lukewarm, we want you to repent and turn away from that sins. Well, that is going to do it for this week, folks.

Please come back and join us next week. Until then, we want to encourage you to remember to pray for the peace of Jerusalem. Bless God's great nation of Israel until the only wise God be glory through Jesus Christ forever. Amen. The Kingdom of God