Scripture: Rev. 3:14 – 22
The listen link: www.lcepc.org then look for the “sermons” tab
You remember how churches used to be? You know, the legalistic rules many of us grew up with like “Don’t drink, smoke or chew and don’t hang out with people who do.” The church has come a long way from two Sunday services, mandatory weekly Bible study, and prohibitions on things like card playing, movies and dancing. I think that’s a good thing. We are surely not that legalistic anymore.
But is that really a good thing? Has the Church changed those things in response to God’s call and command, or is it more that we have we caved in to social and cultural pressure? I think a lot of people would answer that we have caved. A lot of people feel that the Church has lost its power and influence because we have spoiled our kids with a more permissive stance that doesn’t do a good enough job of training them up in righteousness.
I have a slightly different take on that. I would agree that we haven’t correctly discipled our kids or handed down our faith so that they want to be in Church. But I think the reason is because of the more legalistic approach that turned the Church into a behavior modification school and lost track of how to preach the amazing Grace of God that transforms sinners into willing servants by the power of the gospel.
For example, I talked to a guy a few years ago and asked him why he didn’t go to church anymore. He explained that he had been in church through his childhood, where they taught him how to be a good person. When he graduated high school he also graduated from Church. He knew how to be a good person by then and the church didn’t have any more to offer him. He got the message that the church was just there to teach him how to behave. But he hadn’t heard the message of grace and forgiveness of sin that would have helped him fall in love with Jesus.
Another story is from a faithful believer’s perspective. In Junior high, my friend John was a sensitive kid. He’s 70 now, so this is a long time ago, a deep thinker. In Sunday school class one day, the teacher asked all the kids to raise their hands if they had accepted Jesus as Lord and Savior. John watched all the badly-behaved ruffians, the bullies and trouble makers, that only sat still in Sunday School, raise their hands with everybody else. But John did not raise his hand. He knew he was a sinner and wasn’t sure if he sincerely believed that he had become a committed Christian, even though he was gentle and much better behaved than many of the other kids who did raise their hands.
The Sunday School teacher told John’s mom, who was also a Sunday school teacher in John’s church. At home, John was scolded for not raising his hand. He was told, “Why didn’t you raise your hand, of course you’re a Christian, you’ve been going to church all your life!” How tragic that the adults around him were more concerned about getting the right answer from their student than about listening to the heart of the young person seeking to really know Jesus. They were not gracious toward John and his questions because he hadn’t responded according to their expectations.
John looks back at that story and acknowledges that sadly, the Sunday School program he grew up in was much more interested in getting kids to behave well, than in getting them to know Jesus. The legalistic church of the old days failed to talk enough about the amazing grace of God, who loves us no matter what, warts and all, as they say.
So, yes, the church did cave to social pressure. But not the way you think. It is the devil himself who wants more than anything for us to focus on behavior all we like, as long as we forget about Jesus in the process. Even atheists work on getting their children to behave well and get along with others so they can be successful in society. All religions try to teach good behavior. But only Christianity can offer the amazing grace of God and show how to have a personal relationship with him as our heavenly Father. So, it is not that the church lost its focus on good behavior. It is that the church lost its focus on Jesus, the heart and soul of the gospel of grace. And when that happens, we become just another worldly religion no matter how well our children behave.
That’s what happened to the Laodiceans. They suffered a great delusion. They thought they were a good church. There was preaching. There was activity. They were probably working on teaching their children to behave well, just like everybody else. But they had become just another religion. They were saying they were rich. That either means they were prospering materially, or they saw themselves as a fount of wisdom for living. But Jesus sharply disagreed. Who’s right? Jesus of course!
Probably every generation needs to sort through their own collection of the “traditions of men” that develop in any community and seek to discern what we are doing today that is more traditional than biblical. If we are not a legalistic church and we have gladly left behind such strict and unfriendly, inhospitable rules, does that automatically mean we are a God honoring church, or could it be that other traditions have snuck in to take the place of truly biblical Christianity?
What if the pendulum has swung too far the other way now and we are way too relaxed about how we approach God or what kind of living he expects of us? What if the traditions that we live by now treat God too much like a good buddy and not enough like the holy God he really is? What if our current traditions are not even recognized as traditions because they are more like habits of behavior that we just live by without ever thinking or questioning? What if we are just assuming everything is fine because we can say we’re not legalistic? Doesn’t that makes us blind in another way?
Surely something like that is what was happening in the Church at Laodicea, even so soon after Jesus’ resurrection and Paul’s ministry in the area. Their performance review didn’t go well at all. Jesus said, “These are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness.” They were all supposed to be witnesses. He himself declares himself to be “the faithful and true witness, the ruler of God’s creation.” And then he says to them, “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 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.”
This rebuke is filled with images they would readily understand. Like I’ve talked about in every other church in Turkey, Jesus connected their culture with the things he said to them. The city of Laodicea was indeed very wealthy in material goods. They were so rich that when an earthquake struck the area, they were one city that did not take the Roman government handout to rebuild. They didn’t need it! It was like refusing to accept federal disaster relief funds! Is there any city in America that would think itself that rich? Alabama goes through a hurricane and the government rushes in to help them out and Alabama says, “No. That’s all right. We don’t need it.” They’d have to be really rich!
The city was also famous for its garment industry, though they mostly produced clothing made of black wool. And they also boasted an important medical center for good health. The one thing they didn’t have was a good water supply. It had to be piped in from a great distance and that is why it was neither hot nor cold by the time it got to them. If they had used a hot spring, it would be tepid by the time it got to them. If they got water fresh out of the fountains from the mountains and it was ice cold snow melt, it would be lukewarm by the time it got to Laodicea. The pipes were that long. It also got to be so filled with sediment that it didn’t taste good.
Jesus highlighted all these material things that were true about the Laodicean church to emphasize that the church was caught up in the same pride as the pagan citizens and was focused on the wrong things. He was telling them that he feels like they think they don’t need him! Jesus related to their complaints about the real water they had to drink to highlight his disgust with how they were towards him.
What these images were intended to convey to them is that the biggest part of their problem is that they do not realize what a mess they are in or how far they have strayed from the thing God really wants for them. He says he knows their deeds, so we can assume they were busy doing something. But apparently being busy doesn’t necessarily or automatically mean that you are doing the right things or that God is pleased that you are busy.
Whatever they were busy doing had already blinded them to the true condition of their spiritual work. They called themselves a church and they worked at it. But Jesus said they were lukewarm, wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked! And they thought they were just the opposite! They were so proud of themselves. They were self-righteous, just like the self-righteous Pharisees who had set up all their own traditions that actually created loop holes that led them away from true obedience to God’s commands and caused the most religious people in Jerusalem to be blind to who Jesus really was.
And for all their busy-ness they are judged by Jesus to be lukewarm in their devotion and love to him. They congratulate themselves for all their effort and don’t hear Jesus’ voice that would guide them better. We do well to heed this warning. We might like to think that we can’t possibly be as bad off as the Laodiceans because we know we are not rich! We know we do not have a lot of resources. We know we are poor and we constantly pray for Jesus’ help and that is a very good thing. But as I said in the beginning, what if we are blind to what Jesus really wants from us because we like the way we already do things? What if we subtly worship our own comfort zone and are unwilling to make whatever sacrifice God may ask of us so that we become a people used of God to reach the lost?
In a book about modern evangelism, the author, who happens to be a pastor of a Christian Reformed church in Byron Center MI, says that he always asks 3 questions of any congregation who say they want to reach the lost. A definite “yes” to all three questions will mean fruitfulness. A “no” answer to any one of the three will mean that congregation is not really interested in reaching the lost for Christ. So here are the three questions. See how you answer: 1. Do you believe the Bible to be the true word of God, worthy of our devotion and containing the only hope of salvation? 2. Do you love the lost sinners around you with the love of Jesus Christ so that your ministry cares about outreach and has outreach programs, are you actively trying to reach the lost? Yes? Really? Can you identify your outreach ministries? Do you personally love to participate in these outreach ministries? Are you just being a well behaved Christian? Or are you moved to serve by Jesus’ great love for you?
Before I ask the final question, I want to point out that in almost every case, any group of church leaders and any congregation that calls itself Christian will answer the first two questions resoundingly yes and amen! Or at least they would want to. They know that’s what church is supposed to be doing. I’ll bet you feel that way too. Now the final question: Do you love the Lord so much that you will do anything he asks of you to reach the lost even if it means changing the way you do church, changing the places you do church and even changing the times of our worship services? Can you throw out everything you call church and keep just the Bible as the only non-negotiable? Now if you say yes to that one, thank the Lord, and I’m going to hold you to it.
When Jesus says, “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.” He is really telling them that they should remember that what he has to offer is far superior to anything they could possibly acquire from the broken and sinful world that treasures merely material things. But how are they supposed to “buy” these things from Jesus? Isn’t salvation supposed to be a free gift?
What could we possibly offer to Jesus in exchange for the gift of salvation? We already know nothing can pay the price Jesus paid for us. So then, let us make a distinction between the free gift of salvation by grace that is ours just by believing that Jesus paid it all, and the process of discipleship and sanctification that is ours when we take up the cross, run the race, do the works prepared in advance for us to do and work out our salvation with fear and trembling. Those are the things that cost us.
Romans 12: 1-2 asks us to offer ourselves as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God, a spiritual act of worship. But if we become willing to make such a sacrifice, pouring ourselves out like drink offerings because we want to be used of God to reach and save the lost, how will we know which behaviors we must change? How will we see which things about the ways we worship are just traditions and stand in the way of the real commands of God?
How do we avoid both extremes of legalism and laxity? Jesus gives us the answer for how in his message to Laodicea. There is a love connection! Jesus said, “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.” Jesus is not really ready to spit them out of his mouth and walk away. He loves them and his rebuke and his appeal are his expression of tough love designed to rock their world open their eyes and produce the repentance he asks of them.
Then Jesus puts the focus on how it is to happen on intimate fellowship with him. He does not stand at the door of an unbeliever’s heart and knock. In spite of how this verse has traditionally been used in evangelistic efforts, surely you can see that when Jesus first said it, he was really talking to his bride! The church he loves has put him out in the cold and he wants back in! He loves her!
“Standing at the door and knocking,” we too easily spiritualize this concept and don’t take the time to think about how we react, what is going on inside our minds and hearts when someone is literally standing outside our own front door and knocking.
There you are having dinner, talking on the phone, looking at your computer, or watching tv, when there is a knock at the front door. If you weren’t expecting it, your first thought is, “Who could that be?” And in an instant, you decide whether you want to answer it or pretend you’re not home. Normally you want to know who it is, and besides, it’s only polite. You have been trained all your life to not leave someone standing out in the cold.
But, if you’re doing anything about which you have the least feeling of guilt, or embarrassment, you put something away, or you put something on, before you answer that door. Or, if you are fairly certain that it is someone you are afraid of, you might consider escaping out the back door. One thing is certain, no matter how you react, you definitely heard it and your next steps are the response. So, it means an awful lot if someone is knocking at your door and you leave them standing out in the cold, you don’t even respond.
Now amplify that about ten times by realizing that in the ancient culture of the early church, hospitality was practically a law of society. When someone knocked at your door, you were literally required by social custom to behave like a good neighbor, let them in, and give them whatever they asked for. So, when Jesus said he was knocking at the door of the church, speaking to the Laodiceans, he was using a powerful image to tell them of their huge failure to welcome him into their midst! It cannot be that they didn’t hear him, didn’t know who was at the door, or simply missed an opportunity. He was telling them that they had become indifferent to him. Totally inhospitable, in violation of all common courtesy. They didn’t want him. They had rejected his leadership and authority over them. They stopped loving Jesus!
It is not that Jesus really had to wait for someone to answer either. Just remember that on the day of his resurrection the scared disciples were gathered in the upper room, and they had locked the door to keep out any temple guards or Roman soldiers that might come looking for them! If there had been a knock on that door, they might have jumped out the window! But Jesus didn’t knock. He just walked in. He knows where he is welcome. The locked door didn’t stop him from joining them. But locked hearts can. That’s a door he’ll never push.
The love connection solves the problem of figuring out how to behave. Jesus said if we love him, we will obey him. We can only properly love Jesus and behave like true Christians after we have been transformed by the power of his amazing love and grace. You’ve all heard of the transformation of the caterpillar into the butterfly. It’s a common image of what it means to become a new creation in Christ, you change from a caterpillar into a butterfly.
Now think about that. Would you look at a caterpillar and tell it to fly? Would you ask it to behave in a way that it cannot? Or worse, would you pick up a caterpillar and toss it into the air to make it fly? It’s not going to work. You know it can’t behave that way. It can’t fly until after it transforms into a butterfly. Neither can a human truly act like a Christian until after he or she is transformed by the love and grace that is ours when we get to know Jesus personally.
I know that from my personal experience. I’d been raised in church. They tried to teach me how to behave like a good kid. I got to be a rebellious teenager and I had rejected all that and did what I wanted to do. And got myself into a lot of trouble, until the day that Jesus sent me a letter, and I opened that letter, and I had been asking God, “Are you really real? Do you even know me, or are you just figment of my imagination?”
And I had been praying about what do I do with my life now that I’d thrown it away? And this letter came from a Christian school. And as I read it, it answered all the questions I’d been thinking and praying about. And on that day, I discovered that God is real, and that God really loves me. That was truly a day of transformation for me. And I changed from not even trying to be a religious person, into, “I love Jesus!” And he loves me more than I could possibly imagine and there’s nothing better I could do with my life than to give it to him.
So, if we focus too much on the golden rule, our kids could crash and burn like a caterpillar trying to fly, or else we’re just telling them to be a good little caterpillar and not filling them with a hunger and thirst for the transformational power of the God who loves them. We all know that Jesus died on a cross. But have you really fallen in love with Jesus because he did that for you? Have you seen yourself at the foot of the cross, looking up at this bloody figure and realize that he did it for you so that you wouldn’t have to go through anything like that? Has the life and love Christ has for you inspired you to want to be with him and be like him?
As we think of how much Jesus loves us, and we would be very happy to let Jesus go on loving us, the question becomes, are do we become eager to live lives of obedience to let him know that we love him too? Have you felt Jesus come into your heart for a deep and rich fellowship that feeds your soul and comes with power to change you into a willing servant who loves others just like Jesus does, and eagerly desires to share that same grace with them?
Then you will not have to be figuring out what do we do to reach the lost. God will tell you. Do this. Do that. So, when you see the opportunity, your heart will respond I can do that I want to do that. The disciples were always worshipping when they received new instructions from God. They were in the upper room praying when Pentecost happened. They suddenly were speaking in other tongues. They were in a rom in Antioch, praying and worshipping God when the Spirit told them what to do. “Set apart Saul and Barnabas to be my missionaries in Europe.” As we love Jesus with our praise and worship for him for what he has done for us we won’t have to figure out what to do. He’ll tell us what to do.
Does this congregation leave Jesus standing out in the cold? Or do we acknowledge that we want Jesus to dwell in our midst and guide our decisions and ministries into greater fruitfulness? If it is the latter, then we have been inspired by God’s love for us, and we have great things ahead of us! Jesus said, “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.” Let the joy of that set before us be a primary motivator for how we live our lives. Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”
Let us pray. Lord, it I hard. It is hard for us to grasp this. We are humans. We are trained from our youth up to behave well, to obey the rules. It’s hard for us to realize what a power it is to know that you love us so. Only your Holy Spirit coming and dwelling within us really transforms us into holy people who love you so much that we would give anything, even die for you to try to reach the lost.
And Lord we need that kind of revival. We need that kind of encouragement. We need that kind of touch. We need your Holy Spirit to come and fill us again so that we know that we love you because you have loved us first. And then we will truly be an unstoppable force that can reach the lost and watch them transform also. This is our prayer, in Jesus name, amen.
The listen link: www.lcepc.org then look for the “sermons” tab
You remember how churches used to be? You know, the legalistic rules many of us grew up with like “Don’t drink, smoke or chew and don’t hang out with people who do.” The church has come a long way from two Sunday services, mandatory weekly Bible study, and prohibitions on things like card playing, movies and dancing. I think that’s a good thing. We are surely not that legalistic anymore.
But is that really a good thing? Has the Church changed those things in response to God’s call and command, or is it more that we have we caved in to social and cultural pressure? I think a lot of people would answer that we have caved. A lot of people feel that the Church has lost its power and influence because we have spoiled our kids with a more permissive stance that doesn’t do a good enough job of training them up in righteousness.
I have a slightly different take on that. I would agree that we haven’t correctly discipled our kids or handed down our faith so that they want to be in Church. But I think the reason is because of the more legalistic approach that turned the Church into a behavior modification school and lost track of how to preach the amazing Grace of God that transforms sinners into willing servants by the power of the gospel.
For example, I talked to a guy a few years ago and asked him why he didn’t go to church anymore. He explained that he had been in church through his childhood, where they taught him how to be a good person. When he graduated high school he also graduated from Church. He knew how to be a good person by then and the church didn’t have any more to offer him. He got the message that the church was just there to teach him how to behave. But he hadn’t heard the message of grace and forgiveness of sin that would have helped him fall in love with Jesus.
Another story is from a faithful believer’s perspective. In Junior high, my friend John was a sensitive kid. He’s 70 now, so this is a long time ago, a deep thinker. In Sunday school class one day, the teacher asked all the kids to raise their hands if they had accepted Jesus as Lord and Savior. John watched all the badly-behaved ruffians, the bullies and trouble makers, that only sat still in Sunday School, raise their hands with everybody else. But John did not raise his hand. He knew he was a sinner and wasn’t sure if he sincerely believed that he had become a committed Christian, even though he was gentle and much better behaved than many of the other kids who did raise their hands.
The Sunday School teacher told John’s mom, who was also a Sunday school teacher in John’s church. At home, John was scolded for not raising his hand. He was told, “Why didn’t you raise your hand, of course you’re a Christian, you’ve been going to church all your life!” How tragic that the adults around him were more concerned about getting the right answer from their student than about listening to the heart of the young person seeking to really know Jesus. They were not gracious toward John and his questions because he hadn’t responded according to their expectations.
John looks back at that story and acknowledges that sadly, the Sunday School program he grew up in was much more interested in getting kids to behave well, than in getting them to know Jesus. The legalistic church of the old days failed to talk enough about the amazing grace of God, who loves us no matter what, warts and all, as they say.
So, yes, the church did cave to social pressure. But not the way you think. It is the devil himself who wants more than anything for us to focus on behavior all we like, as long as we forget about Jesus in the process. Even atheists work on getting their children to behave well and get along with others so they can be successful in society. All religions try to teach good behavior. But only Christianity can offer the amazing grace of God and show how to have a personal relationship with him as our heavenly Father. So, it is not that the church lost its focus on good behavior. It is that the church lost its focus on Jesus, the heart and soul of the gospel of grace. And when that happens, we become just another worldly religion no matter how well our children behave.
That’s what happened to the Laodiceans. They suffered a great delusion. They thought they were a good church. There was preaching. There was activity. They were probably working on teaching their children to behave well, just like everybody else. But they had become just another religion. They were saying they were rich. That either means they were prospering materially, or they saw themselves as a fount of wisdom for living. But Jesus sharply disagreed. Who’s right? Jesus of course!
Probably every generation needs to sort through their own collection of the “traditions of men” that develop in any community and seek to discern what we are doing today that is more traditional than biblical. If we are not a legalistic church and we have gladly left behind such strict and unfriendly, inhospitable rules, does that automatically mean we are a God honoring church, or could it be that other traditions have snuck in to take the place of truly biblical Christianity?
What if the pendulum has swung too far the other way now and we are way too relaxed about how we approach God or what kind of living he expects of us? What if the traditions that we live by now treat God too much like a good buddy and not enough like the holy God he really is? What if our current traditions are not even recognized as traditions because they are more like habits of behavior that we just live by without ever thinking or questioning? What if we are just assuming everything is fine because we can say we’re not legalistic? Doesn’t that makes us blind in another way?
Surely something like that is what was happening in the Church at Laodicea, even so soon after Jesus’ resurrection and Paul’s ministry in the area. Their performance review didn’t go well at all. Jesus said, “These are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness.” They were all supposed to be witnesses. He himself declares himself to be “the faithful and true witness, the ruler of God’s creation.” And then he says to them, “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 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.”
This rebuke is filled with images they would readily understand. Like I’ve talked about in every other church in Turkey, Jesus connected their culture with the things he said to them. The city of Laodicea was indeed very wealthy in material goods. They were so rich that when an earthquake struck the area, they were one city that did not take the Roman government handout to rebuild. They didn’t need it! It was like refusing to accept federal disaster relief funds! Is there any city in America that would think itself that rich? Alabama goes through a hurricane and the government rushes in to help them out and Alabama says, “No. That’s all right. We don’t need it.” They’d have to be really rich!
The city was also famous for its garment industry, though they mostly produced clothing made of black wool. And they also boasted an important medical center for good health. The one thing they didn’t have was a good water supply. It had to be piped in from a great distance and that is why it was neither hot nor cold by the time it got to them. If they had used a hot spring, it would be tepid by the time it got to them. If they got water fresh out of the fountains from the mountains and it was ice cold snow melt, it would be lukewarm by the time it got to Laodicea. The pipes were that long. It also got to be so filled with sediment that it didn’t taste good.
Jesus highlighted all these material things that were true about the Laodicean church to emphasize that the church was caught up in the same pride as the pagan citizens and was focused on the wrong things. He was telling them that he feels like they think they don’t need him! Jesus related to their complaints about the real water they had to drink to highlight his disgust with how they were towards him.
What these images were intended to convey to them is that the biggest part of their problem is that they do not realize what a mess they are in or how far they have strayed from the thing God really wants for them. He says he knows their deeds, so we can assume they were busy doing something. But apparently being busy doesn’t necessarily or automatically mean that you are doing the right things or that God is pleased that you are busy.
Whatever they were busy doing had already blinded them to the true condition of their spiritual work. They called themselves a church and they worked at it. But Jesus said they were lukewarm, wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked! And they thought they were just the opposite! They were so proud of themselves. They were self-righteous, just like the self-righteous Pharisees who had set up all their own traditions that actually created loop holes that led them away from true obedience to God’s commands and caused the most religious people in Jerusalem to be blind to who Jesus really was.
And for all their busy-ness they are judged by Jesus to be lukewarm in their devotion and love to him. They congratulate themselves for all their effort and don’t hear Jesus’ voice that would guide them better. We do well to heed this warning. We might like to think that we can’t possibly be as bad off as the Laodiceans because we know we are not rich! We know we do not have a lot of resources. We know we are poor and we constantly pray for Jesus’ help and that is a very good thing. But as I said in the beginning, what if we are blind to what Jesus really wants from us because we like the way we already do things? What if we subtly worship our own comfort zone and are unwilling to make whatever sacrifice God may ask of us so that we become a people used of God to reach the lost?
In a book about modern evangelism, the author, who happens to be a pastor of a Christian Reformed church in Byron Center MI, says that he always asks 3 questions of any congregation who say they want to reach the lost. A definite “yes” to all three questions will mean fruitfulness. A “no” answer to any one of the three will mean that congregation is not really interested in reaching the lost for Christ. So here are the three questions. See how you answer: 1. Do you believe the Bible to be the true word of God, worthy of our devotion and containing the only hope of salvation? 2. Do you love the lost sinners around you with the love of Jesus Christ so that your ministry cares about outreach and has outreach programs, are you actively trying to reach the lost? Yes? Really? Can you identify your outreach ministries? Do you personally love to participate in these outreach ministries? Are you just being a well behaved Christian? Or are you moved to serve by Jesus’ great love for you?
Before I ask the final question, I want to point out that in almost every case, any group of church leaders and any congregation that calls itself Christian will answer the first two questions resoundingly yes and amen! Or at least they would want to. They know that’s what church is supposed to be doing. I’ll bet you feel that way too. Now the final question: Do you love the Lord so much that you will do anything he asks of you to reach the lost even if it means changing the way you do church, changing the places you do church and even changing the times of our worship services? Can you throw out everything you call church and keep just the Bible as the only non-negotiable? Now if you say yes to that one, thank the Lord, and I’m going to hold you to it.
When Jesus says, “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.” He is really telling them that they should remember that what he has to offer is far superior to anything they could possibly acquire from the broken and sinful world that treasures merely material things. But how are they supposed to “buy” these things from Jesus? Isn’t salvation supposed to be a free gift?
What could we possibly offer to Jesus in exchange for the gift of salvation? We already know nothing can pay the price Jesus paid for us. So then, let us make a distinction between the free gift of salvation by grace that is ours just by believing that Jesus paid it all, and the process of discipleship and sanctification that is ours when we take up the cross, run the race, do the works prepared in advance for us to do and work out our salvation with fear and trembling. Those are the things that cost us.
Romans 12: 1-2 asks us to offer ourselves as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God, a spiritual act of worship. But if we become willing to make such a sacrifice, pouring ourselves out like drink offerings because we want to be used of God to reach and save the lost, how will we know which behaviors we must change? How will we see which things about the ways we worship are just traditions and stand in the way of the real commands of God?
How do we avoid both extremes of legalism and laxity? Jesus gives us the answer for how in his message to Laodicea. There is a love connection! Jesus said, “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.” Jesus is not really ready to spit them out of his mouth and walk away. He loves them and his rebuke and his appeal are his expression of tough love designed to rock their world open their eyes and produce the repentance he asks of them.
Then Jesus puts the focus on how it is to happen on intimate fellowship with him. He does not stand at the door of an unbeliever’s heart and knock. In spite of how this verse has traditionally been used in evangelistic efforts, surely you can see that when Jesus first said it, he was really talking to his bride! The church he loves has put him out in the cold and he wants back in! He loves her!
“Standing at the door and knocking,” we too easily spiritualize this concept and don’t take the time to think about how we react, what is going on inside our minds and hearts when someone is literally standing outside our own front door and knocking.
There you are having dinner, talking on the phone, looking at your computer, or watching tv, when there is a knock at the front door. If you weren’t expecting it, your first thought is, “Who could that be?” And in an instant, you decide whether you want to answer it or pretend you’re not home. Normally you want to know who it is, and besides, it’s only polite. You have been trained all your life to not leave someone standing out in the cold.
But, if you’re doing anything about which you have the least feeling of guilt, or embarrassment, you put something away, or you put something on, before you answer that door. Or, if you are fairly certain that it is someone you are afraid of, you might consider escaping out the back door. One thing is certain, no matter how you react, you definitely heard it and your next steps are the response. So, it means an awful lot if someone is knocking at your door and you leave them standing out in the cold, you don’t even respond.
Now amplify that about ten times by realizing that in the ancient culture of the early church, hospitality was practically a law of society. When someone knocked at your door, you were literally required by social custom to behave like a good neighbor, let them in, and give them whatever they asked for. So, when Jesus said he was knocking at the door of the church, speaking to the Laodiceans, he was using a powerful image to tell them of their huge failure to welcome him into their midst! It cannot be that they didn’t hear him, didn’t know who was at the door, or simply missed an opportunity. He was telling them that they had become indifferent to him. Totally inhospitable, in violation of all common courtesy. They didn’t want him. They had rejected his leadership and authority over them. They stopped loving Jesus!
It is not that Jesus really had to wait for someone to answer either. Just remember that on the day of his resurrection the scared disciples were gathered in the upper room, and they had locked the door to keep out any temple guards or Roman soldiers that might come looking for them! If there had been a knock on that door, they might have jumped out the window! But Jesus didn’t knock. He just walked in. He knows where he is welcome. The locked door didn’t stop him from joining them. But locked hearts can. That’s a door he’ll never push.
The love connection solves the problem of figuring out how to behave. Jesus said if we love him, we will obey him. We can only properly love Jesus and behave like true Christians after we have been transformed by the power of his amazing love and grace. You’ve all heard of the transformation of the caterpillar into the butterfly. It’s a common image of what it means to become a new creation in Christ, you change from a caterpillar into a butterfly.
Now think about that. Would you look at a caterpillar and tell it to fly? Would you ask it to behave in a way that it cannot? Or worse, would you pick up a caterpillar and toss it into the air to make it fly? It’s not going to work. You know it can’t behave that way. It can’t fly until after it transforms into a butterfly. Neither can a human truly act like a Christian until after he or she is transformed by the love and grace that is ours when we get to know Jesus personally.
I know that from my personal experience. I’d been raised in church. They tried to teach me how to behave like a good kid. I got to be a rebellious teenager and I had rejected all that and did what I wanted to do. And got myself into a lot of trouble, until the day that Jesus sent me a letter, and I opened that letter, and I had been asking God, “Are you really real? Do you even know me, or are you just figment of my imagination?”
And I had been praying about what do I do with my life now that I’d thrown it away? And this letter came from a Christian school. And as I read it, it answered all the questions I’d been thinking and praying about. And on that day, I discovered that God is real, and that God really loves me. That was truly a day of transformation for me. And I changed from not even trying to be a religious person, into, “I love Jesus!” And he loves me more than I could possibly imagine and there’s nothing better I could do with my life than to give it to him.
So, if we focus too much on the golden rule, our kids could crash and burn like a caterpillar trying to fly, or else we’re just telling them to be a good little caterpillar and not filling them with a hunger and thirst for the transformational power of the God who loves them. We all know that Jesus died on a cross. But have you really fallen in love with Jesus because he did that for you? Have you seen yourself at the foot of the cross, looking up at this bloody figure and realize that he did it for you so that you wouldn’t have to go through anything like that? Has the life and love Christ has for you inspired you to want to be with him and be like him?
As we think of how much Jesus loves us, and we would be very happy to let Jesus go on loving us, the question becomes, are do we become eager to live lives of obedience to let him know that we love him too? Have you felt Jesus come into your heart for a deep and rich fellowship that feeds your soul and comes with power to change you into a willing servant who loves others just like Jesus does, and eagerly desires to share that same grace with them?
Then you will not have to be figuring out what do we do to reach the lost. God will tell you. Do this. Do that. So, when you see the opportunity, your heart will respond I can do that I want to do that. The disciples were always worshipping when they received new instructions from God. They were in the upper room praying when Pentecost happened. They suddenly were speaking in other tongues. They were in a rom in Antioch, praying and worshipping God when the Spirit told them what to do. “Set apart Saul and Barnabas to be my missionaries in Europe.” As we love Jesus with our praise and worship for him for what he has done for us we won’t have to figure out what to do. He’ll tell us what to do.
Does this congregation leave Jesus standing out in the cold? Or do we acknowledge that we want Jesus to dwell in our midst and guide our decisions and ministries into greater fruitfulness? If it is the latter, then we have been inspired by God’s love for us, and we have great things ahead of us! Jesus said, “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.” Let the joy of that set before us be a primary motivator for how we live our lives. Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”
Let us pray. Lord, it I hard. It is hard for us to grasp this. We are humans. We are trained from our youth up to behave well, to obey the rules. It’s hard for us to realize what a power it is to know that you love us so. Only your Holy Spirit coming and dwelling within us really transforms us into holy people who love you so much that we would give anything, even die for you to try to reach the lost.
And Lord we need that kind of revival. We need that kind of encouragement. We need that kind of touch. We need your Holy Spirit to come and fill us again so that we know that we love you because you have loved us first. And then we will truly be an unstoppable force that can reach the lost and watch them transform also. This is our prayer, in Jesus name, amen.
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