Rev No.7 The Sick Church

Give thanks to the Lord for he is good, his love endures forever. In your loving arms we lay this wordless one so new, the incarnation of our love we dedicate to you. Help, yes, yet so full of love we make our solemn vow, not knowing when the time will come, not even knowing how.

And though it seems we try to make a promise that is true, we really only claim for them the promise that is you. In your loving arms we lay this wordless one so new, the incarnation of our love we dedicate to you. The holy sleep which falls so deep, a blessing from above, will now embrace our little ones in simple trusting love.

We offer you this child who's only ours for just a while. How could we keep it back from you when you gave our only child? In your loving arms we lay this wordless one so new, the incarnation of our love we dedicate to you. In your loving arms we lay this wordless one so new, the incarnation of our love we dedicate to you.

Jesus, let them come to know you. Let them see you face to face. Touch them, hold them, use them, mold them, only let them live in you.

Jesus, draw them ever nearer, hold them in your loving arms, wrap them in your gentle presence, only let them live in you. Jesus, draw them ever nearer, hold them in your loving arms, wrap them in your gentle presence, only let them live in you. Father, we read there of the church as she should be and we look at the church as she is.

We ask that you will bridge the gap by the working of your spirit in the lives of every individual Christian. So continue with us now for Jesus' sake. Amen.

Cast all your cares upon him because he cares for you. Something practical. Let's just do it now.

Revelations chapter 3 verse 14. Father, as we read your word we ask you that by your spirit you might bring this word to life in us. In Jesus' name.

Amen. To the angel of the church in Laodicea write, these are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the ruler of God's creation. 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'm 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 realise that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire so that you can become rich and white clothes to wear so that you can cover your shameful nakedness and salve to put on your eyes so that you can see. Those whom I love I rebuke and I discipline.

So be earnest and repent. Here I am. I stand at the door and knock and if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him and he with me.

To him who overcomes, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne just as I overcame and sat down with my father on his throne. He who has an ear to hear, let him hear what the spirit says to the churches. I want to talk to you.

This morning I want to bring you a message from the Lord that I've entitled A Sick Church. A Sick Church. Let's take the seventeenth verse once more of that third chapter of Revelation.

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. Do you know what? It's hard for you to understand this statement because we live in a country where Christianity, though once was center stage, is now being pushed into the background.

But that's not the case in many countries in Southeast Asia, in Africa, nor in South America. And for them the statement I'm about to utter would not be as astonishing as it is to you. That the greatest thing in the world is a church of Jesus Christ.

The church of Jesus Christ. I go further. The only hope that there is for our world is found within the message of the churches that constitute the body of Jesus Christ.

That's why our Lord, none other than He, said in the Sermon, the Sermon on the Mount, speaking of Christian people, you are the light of the world. And He spoke in terms of them taking their illumination into the darkness in which this world is engulfed. He also, sustaining the principle but shifting the metaphor, says of the church that you are salt and you are to go into the world and to savor and purify and cleanse the world.

The Apostle Paul in the fourth chapter of the book of Ephesians, as he recapitulates, as he comes back on what the Ephesian people used to be before they were converted, says, once you were darkness but now are you light in the Lord. The most important entity that there is in the world today is the church of Jesus Christ, and it's possible for the church to know a variety of conditions. She can be in revival and she can be sick.

And here is the aged Apostle John incarcerated on the island of Patmos, and through the inspiration of the Spirit the churches where he has spent a great deal of his life in ministry are brought before him, the seven churches of Asia Minor. And he moves from one church to another church to another church, and the Lord of the church speaks and analyzes the condition of the church. The final part of the opening chapters of the book of Revelation casts its spotlight on the church of Laodicea.

You read of the Lord of the church in the fourteenth verse, the diagnosis of the church in the fifteenth to the seventeenth verses, and as a result of the sickness that is diagnosed, you read further on in the eighteenth verse the prescription that the Lord of the church, the physician of the church offers. And then from the twentieth verse there is promise of recuperation if the church of the Laodiceans will respond to what the Lord of the church has to say. I see the Savior as He passes on His message to the angel of the church to be communicated to the church as the Good Shepherd, keeping watch over His flock.

He has moved from Smyrna. He has moved from Philadelphia. He has moved in the ranks of all these other six churches, and now He pays attention to the church of Laodicea, and He tells us what she is like, mentioned in the book of Revelation, that is reflected in the churches of the twentieth century.

In other words, here at the tab, there are characteristics of the Laodiceans, the more heart-rending ones, and the ones which can be very praiseworthy, provided the Laodiceans and we ourselves respond to the prescription that the physician of the church proffers. So, I ask for your attention as we deal with these somber and yet hope-filled words. The Lord of the church, His dignity, His position.

Well, look at the fourteenth verse, will you? These are the words of the Amen. You don't often think of the Lord Jesus in terms of the Amen, do you? And yet you know that it's customary in our circles at the end of a prayer, and I prefer it actually punctuated throughout the spoken prayer, to offer our Amens. Jesus on occasions, and it's brought out particularly in the Authorized Version of John's Gospel, says, Verily, verily, I say unto you.

The author of the NIV will translate it truly, truly. But the Greek reflecting the Hebrew is Amen. Jesus is putting His hand back, so to speak, into the authority that He has, and He says, I am the Amen, I am the firm one.

And if you want some Old Testament evidence for the title of the Lord God as the Amen, then you have to go to the 65th chapter of Isaiah and the 16th verse, where you read in the NIV, Whoever invokes a blessing in the land will do so by the God of truth. He who takes an oath in the land will swear by the God of truth. But listen to the translation accurately put in the New English Bible, when it says of the Lord, He who invokes a blessing on himself in the land shall do so by the God whose name is Amen, and he who utters an oath in the land shall do so by the God of Amen.

And those of you who are familiar with the Apostle Paul and his teaching in 2 Corinthians 1 and chapter 20 know that Jesus is described as one in whom all the promises of God coalesce. He is the Yea and the Amen to all that God has pronounced, and He moves amongst the churches with a holy authority and dignity. These are the words of the Amen.

Incidentally, the whole theology of the Watchtower collapses. When you assign to the Lord Jesus the title of the Amen, because the only other person in Scripture who takes that is the Father, and the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are co- in their equality, in their authority. So here is the Lord of the church, the Amen, and He's more than that.

He's a true witness. What He says is true. You know that by what He has affirmed on previous instances as He's written to the churches.

These are the words, verse 6, writing to the church of Philadelphia, of Him who is holy and true. Our Lord Jesus says, I am the way, the truth, and the life. Not only is He the truth, not only is He the Amen, but He is the ruler of God's creation, the beginning of the creation of God.

He is one through whom the worlds come into existence. The Apostle Paul makes very clear when writing to the Colossians in the first chapter in the 16th and 17th verses, and John makes clear when he says that in the Word came all things. He is behind the creation of the universe.

Jesus shall reign where the sun doth its successive journeys run. Well here is the Lord of the church, the physician of the church, and before He directs His message to the church at Laodicea, He lets you know who He is. Do you accept the authority of Jesus Christ in your life? I leave the point for you to work through.

The church of Laodicea went wrong when they forgot to have at the forefront of their mind who Jesus is and what they owed Him because of His status. The Lord of the church makes a diagnosis of the church's condition. Verse 15, I know, I know your deeds.

You will discover that the Lord of the church always knows what is going on amongst the churches. For example, when you work through all the other churches that are addressed, take the second verse of the second chapter where the letter is to the Ephesians, the Lord of the church says, I know your deeds. When you move on to the third chapter and the letter is now to the church at Sardis, the Lord of the church says in the first verse, again, I know your deeds.

When writing to the Philadelphians, you read in the eighth verse, I know that you have little strength. There is not one thing that Jesus Christ does not know about every local church, more than that. There is not one thing that He does not know about every church member.

The church at Laodicea was interestingly located. It was a hundred miles east of Ephesus, the first city towards which these churches were addressed historically. It was closely associated with the church of Colossae.

It ranked high in Asia as the center of commerce. It was a very prosperous church indeed. But it was full of complacency.

It was full of spiritual pride. That is what the Lord Jesus says, not so in the fifteenth verse, I know your deeds that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were one or the other.

I am told that even to this day, the area around Laodicea is not well supplied with natural water resources. There is a place called Hierapolis, about six miles away from Laodicea. That is the center of hot springs.

To get water to Laodicea, they had to irrigate it or send it by pipes. As a result, when the water reached Laodicea from Hierapolis, it was not hot water, neither was it cold water. It was tepid water.

And Jesus says, that illustrates you Christian people. You are neither cold nor hot. I could stomach you if you were one of the two extremes, but you are not.

You are in the middle. Lukewarmness. Lukewarmness is incompatible with God.

Here is the Apostle Paul, and he is writing to the Romans, and he speaks most eloquently about what the Lord God has done for them. The Apostle sometimes will get so excited in his writing that he will break every rule of Greek grammar because of what he has to say is so wonderful that there is no language, even the eloquence of the Greek tongue, that can really convey it. And as he is moving into the 31st verse of the 8th chapter, he is speaking about the greatness of this God and the wonder of what He has done for humankind.

He has in mind Calvary and the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. And he reads from Calvary that God is for us. And he says, if God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also along with Him graciously give us all things? Who will bring anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God who justifies.

Who is He that condemns? It is Christ Jesus who died more than that, who was raised from the dead. And he goes on, and the emotion is heightened. And the words pour from his lips and are pushed across the page as they are translated into writing.

And he says, I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any other powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from what? From the love of God which is in Christ Jesus the Lord. God is a God of passion. He gives.

He gives to the limit. He gives to the extraordinary. He gives, and as a result there is astonishment on the part of those who who size up the dimensions of the divine bequests now in the light of what God has done.

How could you possibly be lukewarm? How could you be tepid, you respectable Leodiceans? Not to you do I have to write the message of qualification that I put to the Corinthians. You'll never be extravagant in your worship. You'll never take risks.

You'll always be the epitome of respectability. You'll have your dots, your eyes dotted, and you'll have your t's crossed, and you'll have the the niceness of behavior one to another, and an ordinary sort of coming together. Nobody will ever accuse you of fanaticism, nor can they say that you have no commitment, but there's no fire in your belly.

There's no warmth in your soul. Your singing is without passion. Your worship is anemic.

I had the great pleasure with Rowena of taking out three of the tab young men yesterday, boys from our pathfinders, brothers, credit to their parents, why they behave and so forth. We went to the egg on Rene restaurant on the road, known to the locals as the happy eater. Amazing what little boys will order.

Beans. Tomato sauce. Beans.

Tomato sauce. Sausage. Beans.

One of these delightful kids had also, before he met up with me, been to the sweet shop and he got sherbet lemons. 30 of them. Beans, sherbet lemons, tomato sauce.

One of the wonders of the world is what a little boy's stomach can cope with. Older brothers can sometimes get a little put off by the conduct of younger ones. They have a word that doesn't exactly find a place in the English dictionary that describes their reaction, but it's a good word.

Yuck. Neither hot nor cold. One day I want to preach an address and maybe I'll stray into it now.

When God says yuck. I don't think God would ever say yuck to David. Not that David was the greatest of saints.

Sometimes he plunged into terrible sin. Yet it said of David and a few other men in the Old Testament that he's a man after God's heart, as though you can read the heart of God from the heart of David at its best. Because there's a passion in David which will sometimes take him down into desperate depths, but will oftentimes take him into marvellous spiritual heights.

And when David is in the latter condition, how he behaves and what he does so warms the heart of God that he approves of David like he approves of none other. Here is a woman. She unpins her hair and she comes into the presence of the Lord Jesus.

And she breaks her precious perfume and she anoints his feet and she wipes his feet with her hair. And Jesus doesn't say yuck. He says she's done something beautiful for God.

And he turns around to Simon and those who are criticising the woman for her extravagant behaviour. And in effect he says yuck to them. When I came into your home you gave me no water to wash my feet.

You did not treat me as this woman has treated me. Here is the spontaneity of worship. Here is love poured out.

Here is that which is daring, which breaks convention, which is not conforming to any predetermined plan. And Jesus accepts the Lord of the church. He looks for that which is beyond the normal and the calculated, the respectable, the cold sterility, the calculated reasonableness.

He looks for worship without, but he cannot stand worship without emotion, planning without risk, niceness without enthusiasm, tidiness without extravagance. Someone has referred to the leukemia of non-commitment. That's descriptive of this church.

The leukemia of non-commitment. It's not a rejection, but it's not a full-blooded response to all that God has done for us in Christ. And so in the diagnosis which takes up the longer part of our study, our Lord goes on and contrasts verse 17, what the church said it was and what it really was.

You say, but you do not realise that you are. The gigantic description or difference between the two. You say, I am rich, I've acquired wealth and do not need a thing.

You do not realise that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. Laodicea was a center of commerce. It was also a place where medical practice was at the forefronts of new discovery.

It was also a place where they had a breed of black sheep and the wool was taken and spun and woven into garments, the like of which you could get nowhere else in the Asian province. If you like, Laodicea had one particular center which was a combination of the Bank of England, Harley Street Clinic and Laura Ashley. You know, sometimes the environment can condition the church.

That's the biggest problem in the United Kingdom. So the Apostle Paul, when he writes to the Romans in J.B. Phillips' famous paraphrase, says, don't let the world squeeze you into its mould. That's what was happening at Laodicea.

It was the stuffy conformity that the church had picked up from its environment that conditioned and controlled their attitude and their worship patterns. And says, the Lord, you are not what you think you are, rich, wealth, you do not need a thing, you don't realise that the negatives are the accurate description. You are not what you think you are.

And so the Lord Jesus comes in and he deals with this church by writing out a prescription, which brings us to the positive aspect of the ministry this morning. And it seems to me that we must always be dealing and highlighting positives. You see, that the Lord Jesus will make these criticisms towards the church at Laodicea indicates that there is some help.

You may feel that your own church membership, and I'm not really speaking just in terms of membership of the tab, but membership of the body of Christ is somewhat anemic. And runs parallel in some ways to the Laodicean church, the Laodicean condition. But don't you see, if you recognise that, that's one of the ways in which recovery can come.

The fact that the Lord of the church has something to say to you means he has not dismissed you. Therefore I counsel you. And the most important counsellor for you ever to go to is our Lord Jesus, who through the Holy Paraclete, which is another way of describing the Spirit of God, will bring his word of correction to you.

I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the silver, gold refined in the fire, so that you can become rich. White clothes to wear, far better than what you would ever get down there in the Laodicean bazaars and markets, so that you can cover your shameful nakedness, and an eye salve to put on your eyes, which will have greater effect than the salve that those doctors have discovered, which helps people with a natural eye condition in these days. We're talking a lot about wealth these days, aren't we? The stock market and its bumping up and down because of the Middle East situation and so forth.

But the Lord Jesus makes it very clear when he's writing through the Gospels, inspiring the Gospelers, that there is a richness unto God which is authentic wealth, and there is a richness that this world recognizes that is passing wealth. And if the latter is passing, then the important thing is to acquire authentic wealth. And Jesus says, I counsel you to buy from me gold refined.

And the word buy there is almost a mischievous word. I mean by that it makes you stop and think, which is the reason for using this language. How can you buy from him? Well, there are things, says Isaiah, as he writes his prophecy, anticipating this verse, which are without money and without price.

There are things that Jesus' price can have, and he will make these available to you, provided you come to him with a repentant spirit and request him to put to right all that is wrong in your life. You say you don't need to come. Well, that's the biggest problem, you see.

And to people like that, our Lord Jesus has nothing to say. There's nothing that he can do to help them. But you say, here I am.

I recognize that the Church of Laodicea in some ways, it predicts me. It describes me. I recognize my hopelessness.

Yes, there are times when I just go for a sort of spiritual respectability, but I know it's lifeless. Now, don't you see that once you recognize that condition and you come to him, then he can deal with it. So he says, come and buy.

Buy without money and buy without price. And the correctives, well, they will be applied to your life. I will give you white clothes to wear, so that you can cover your shameful nakedness, which is descriptive of their self-complacency before God.

And I will put salve in your eyes, so that the eyes of your heart will be opened, and you will have understanding of the purposes of God for you and for your church. My dear friends here at Worthington, there's nothing that we require more than to have the gold that Jesus offers. Nothing we need to wear more than the righteousness that comes through the shedding of his precious blood.

Nothing that we require more than that eye salve to anoint our eyes, so that when we read Scripture, we behold wondrous things from out of his law. And day by day we're borne along by the Holy Ghost, receiving further and further revelation from the Word of God. There's nothing more that we require here in our church than that Holy Ghost revival, which will take risks, an extravagance of worship, an extravagance of giving, an ability to inject time in prayer, to be with us on Wednesday, to believe that the head of the church responds to the humble contrite intercessions of his people down here on earth.

And as a result of their intercessions, he pours out his Spirit, and he causes the kingdom of God to extend. The plight of the church is the prayerlessness of the church, and the lukewarmness of the church is illustrated by the latter condition. So says our Lord Jesus, the Lord of the church, as he diagnoses the condition, here is the prescription, come to me and get all these things that you require.

And he goes on to say, those whom I love, I rebuke and discipline. My caring for you is the caring of a sensitive parent who sometimes will correct and cause pain in order that benefit shall be the final result. So be earnest and repent.

And the word there, earnest, is the opposite of the word lukewarm. So be hot and repent. Only Jesus can make your religion hot.

Do you realize that? And as you open your heart and your life to the Lord Jesus Christ, he wants to raise you from the perfunctory and the ordinary so that you might know the blessings of God resting upon you. So be earnest and repent. And then he moves on to that very well-known, though sometimes abused, Scripture.

We have the picture of Holman Hunt, have we not? His picture of the Lord Jesus Christ standing outside the human heart. There is no way in which the door can be opened from the outside, it must be opened from the inside. But my dear Christian friend, this is not a picture of the sinner receiving salvation.

This is the picture of the local church that sometimes excludes fools that we are. Sometimes excludes the Lord of the church from coming in. And so here is our Lord and he's saying, you Laodiceans, it's not too late.

I don't like certain aspects of your so-called Christian performance, but here I am. I stand at the door and I knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him and he with me.

Do you remember how our Lord Jesus in the prayer in the fourteenth chapter of John's Gospel talks about him and the Father coming into the heart of the believer? And to quote a great Anglican theologian, Dr. Hughes, who's just been called to be with the Lord, our home becomes his home, our lordship becomes his lordship, the guest becomes the host, his dining with us becomes our dining with him, for it is only through his abiding in us that we truly abide in him. For one abiding is inseparable from the other. And so concluding the statement, our Lord says to him who overcomes, I will give him the right to sit with me on my throne.

There is a sense in which you and I have already been elevated to the position of sons of the living God. We're seated in heavenly places positionally, but that is the kingdom in the future. Here is the kingdom in the present.

All the promises of the future have not been fulfilled in the present. So our Lord Jesus suggests that those of us who continue to overcome with him, ultimately we'll be with him in glory at his right hand, exercising authority, being involved in the kingdom that he has set up. He who overcomes as I overcome.

He who sits down with my father on his throne as I sit down with my father. He who has an ear to hear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. So have you paid attention? Have you heard what the Spirit of God was saying to the church of Laodicea and is saying to you and to me? How do you rate our church here at the TAMP? Are we so boringly respectable that God says, yuck? Or are we room to be daring with God, the extravaganza of worship and of devotion? Do we pick up the correction? Do we thank God for all that's good about us here? Do we praise him for all that he's doing? Are we looking for more? There is no greater organization in the world today than the Christian church.

And Jesus wants his church as a glorious bride without spot or wrinkle. He wants her holy. He wants her power filled.

He wants her full of faith. Pay attention. Behold, I stand at the door and knock.

If anyone, any ordinary member of the church, not just the elders, not just the deacons, anyone hears my voice and invites me, I will come in all my fullness. He that hath an ear to hear, every individual making up the 500, let him hear. And let the church be back under the authority of the one who bled and died to buy the church for himself.

Amen.