Letter to Laodicea
Pastor Marq Toombs • August 09, 2020
Sermon Overview
REVELATION 3:14–22
Jesus’s letter to Laodicea was written to a dying church. They were lukewarm in their faith because their wealth had smothered the spark they once had. In their wealth and comfort they had grown stagnant in their faith and no longer did the good works they did at the beginning. Jesus offers them the opportunity to come and store up true wealth and riches in his kingdom.
Sermon Transcript
Grace and peace be with you from the Lord Jesus Christ. As you know, we've been walking through the letters to the churches in Asia, from the Book of Revelation. And today we come to the last but not least of the letters and it is by far the hardest letter that Jesus sent to the churches. Jesus writes to a church and he speaks to this church as a prophet. He is the faithful and true witness, he is the Amen. And he has some hard things to say to this church.
As you just heard in the reading of the Scripture, there's not a single good thing Jesus had to say about the church in Laodicea. Laodicea was known as being a place where people were fair. The word means a fair people, a just people. And yet there is an incredible injustice at work in the life of the church in Laodicea. Jesus is disgusted with them not because they are so wealthy, he is disgusted with them because they are not using their wealth to benefit others. They are not using the resources that he has entrusted to them to help others. And he is disgusted with this.
Now the low-hanging fruit of this sermon would be to go at people who are wealthy and make them feel guilty for having more than others have. That is not what Jesus is doing in this letter, he is going after this church because he has entrusted this church with an incredible amount of money, with resources that would bless and benefit others and yet they have kept these things to themselves. I remind you that not long ago, we met a church in the same presbytery as the church of Laodicea that was extremely poor. Why isn't the church at Laodicea helping their sister church? Why aren't they taking care of their brothers and sisters in Christ? Why aren't they looking out to the world around them to find where the pain and suffering is and drive at that and meet that need? These are the concerns that Jesus has as he speaks to this church at Laodicea.
Again, they are not in trouble because they are wealthy, they are in trouble because they love the world more than they love the Word made flesh. Being rich wrecks your soul. We used to know that. And this is how a perspective piece from the Washington post begins, "Being rich wrecks your soul." We used to know that. "Being rich is really bad for you," I'm quoting from the article. "According to many philosophies and faiths, wealth should serve only as a stepping stone to some further good and is always fraught with moral danger. We all used to recognize this, it was common place, and this is intuition shared by various cultures across history stands firm on empirical ground.
Over the past few years, a pile of studies from the behavioral sciences has appeared and they all say more or less being rich is really bad for you. Wealth it turns out leads to behavioral and psychological maladies. The rich act and think in misdirected ways. When it comes to a broad range of vices, the rich outperform everybody else. They are much more likely than the rest of humanity to shoplift and to cheat. They are more apt to be adulterers and to drink a great deal. They are even more likely to take candy that is meant for children. This is not from a Christian commentary on wealth, this is from the Washington Post, and someone who is paying attention to the world around us. Jesus could have written the letter to the church at Laodicea to the Church in America.
We are an incredibly wealthy people. The poorest of our churches are still incredibly wealthy relative to the state of the church around the world. And Jesus has a thing or two to say about that. What does he say to us? He speaks to the Church as a prophet. He is the Faithful and True Witness, the Faithful and True Martyr. He is hearkening back to the original vision that we saw several weeks ago when Jesus revealed himself to John on Patmos, and he's coming to this church as a prophet to tell her the truth.
Notice he doesn't say anything kind or good about this church, he goes at her for two reasons. One is, she seems to be ambivalent. He goes at her ambivalence, she's lukewarm. And then he goes after her arrogance because she says, "I don't need anything. I have all that I need, I don't need anything." Ambivalence and arrogance are characteristics of many churches in America, perhaps even we should say of many Christians in America. We have what we need we're indistinct, and Jesus is driving straight at that.
Oftentimes, you'll hear people talk about someone who is lukewarm in a spiritual context and they'll say, what that means is Jesus wishes that you were either really on fire for him or that you were totally chill with him. Jesus is not concerned about the spiritual intensity of the church at Laodicea, he is concerned about the fact that she has assimilated to the world around her, that she is indistinct from the world. Her ambivalence towards the things of God, her ambivalence towards the needs of others is what drives Jesus to say, "I wish that you were one way or the other, I wish there was some distinguishing mark about you, something that marks you as my people, but I don't see it."
And he uses a strong word here, the only time in the Scriptures this word is used where he says, "I will vomit you out of my mouth." It's the idea of utter disgust and rebuke. He can't stand the way she tastes, the way she looks, the way she's acting. He goes after her ambivalence because her ambivalence has led her to indifference. Indifference towards the needs of others around her. She's not concerned about the church at Smyrna, she's not concerned about the people in her city, she's concerned about herself and she feels quite good about herself because of what she has acquired and what she has accomplished. So Jesus goes after that and her arrogance because now she feels independent. Independent from the Lord.
Listen to what she says about herself, "I am rich, I have prospered, I need nothing." These are the kinds of things that God's people said in the Old Testament. For example, in the book of Hosea, God's people said, "Oh, but I am rich, I have found wealth for myself and all my laborers they cannot find in me iniquity or sin." there was a kind of prosperity gospel at work in the life of God's people in the Old Testament and the New Testament and in our day. People have a tendency to tie their material wellbeing to their spiritual wellbeing. So when they are prosperous they think, God must love me, God must be blessing me, look how great my life is going. He's winking at my sin, He doesn't really care what I do. In fact, He's blessing me in my pursuits.
And a kind of self-deception overcomes the people. Righteousness, clean living do not always result in prosperity. And yet the church at Laodicea seemed to think that it did, they were confusing things. What Jesus says about this church also reminds us of something we're going to see. If you were reading the Book of Revelation, you would see it later on in the book of something you can see in the city of man, something you can see in Jezebel. Later in the Book of Revelation, Jesus describes the whore of Babylon in this way and he says, "The woman was arrayed in purple and Scarlet and adorned with gold and jewels and pearls holding in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the impurities of her sexual immorality. Alas, alas for the great city that was clothed in fine linen, in purple and scarlet, adorned with gold, with jewels and with pearls."
What is happening in the story? We're seeing that the church at Laodicea is not reflective of the glory of Jesus, she is reflective of the shame of her culture, of the world around her. The church had compromised and assimilated.
One of my favorite scholars and theologians, Hans Boersma, talks about evangelicalism in this way. And he talks about the strengths and the weaknesses of American evangelicalism in particular. And he says that her strength is actually her weakness. Her greatest strength is actually her greatest weakness. He talks about the greatest strength of American evangelicalism as being her ability to adapt to situations. Her adaptability. And we are an adaptable people. We're constantly making adjustments and we're making adjustments because we want to love and serve others with the gospel. But that's also a great weakness of American evangelicalism because it's often the case that our adaptability spills over into assimilation, where we are adapting so much and making adjustments so much that at some point we just cave in and give in and say, "We're just gonna be like the world." Our greatest strength is also our greatest weakness.
And I think what happened in the church at Laodicea is that she had grown accustomed to life in this world where they had a powerful banking system. They had medical technologies that no one else had. This was a lucrative luxurious city and they were adapting to that and making the most of that and eventually assimilated into that life. As I tried to make sense of what was happening in Laodicea, I couldn't get one of the parables of Jesus out of my mind. And I want to adapt that parable to the church at Laodicea, to help you understand a little bit better what's going on with her.
Listen to the parable in this way as I'm going to reframe it a bit. The ministry of the church at Laodicea produced plentifully and she thought to herself, what shall I do for I have nowhere to store my wealth. And she said, "I will do this, I will tear down my building and I will build a larger building and there I will store all my glory and all my goods. And I will say to my soul, soul you have ample goods laid up for many years, relax, eat, drink, and be merry." And no sooner did they cast that vision for 2020 than Jesus came along and said, "You fools, this night, your soul is required of you and the things you have prepared where will they be? So it is with the church who lays up treasure for herself and is not rich towards God."
Jesus comes to the church at Laodicea and he counsels her and he charges her to change. He wants her to change and so he speaks to her and says, "I counsel you to buy from me gold and white garments and salve for your eyes." What does he mention these three things in particular? He mentions these three things because these are the things that connect them back to himself. He revealed himself on the isle of Patmos in this way, he described himself as one who was like a son of man clothed with a long robe and a golden sash around his chest. And the hairs of his head were white like wool and snow and his eyes were like flames of fire. He is saying to the church, “You have got to make a trade. You've got to trade Jezebel for Jesus. You've got to trade the world for the Word Made Flesh. You've got to identify yourselves once again with the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”
It is hard for the church to do this. This is a consumeristic church and she's wanting to purchase everything. She thinks that all you need is money. Someone has said this church was so poor that all she had was money, but what she needed was Christ.
So Jesus in a playful way says, "Hey, come buy something for me." But you can't buy from Jesus what he gives you freely. Come purchase something, come spend what you've got on me. Use your capital to get the real thing and not those things that are counterfeit. And you can imagine the church thinking, how do I do that? What does life in Christ cost? What would it cost to get this fine linen robe? These white garments, or gold refined by fire or salve to anoint my blind eyes. What would it take? What would it cost? And Jesus says, "You don't have enough money. You're poor, you're pitiful, you're blind, you're naked, you're wretched. You are poverty stricken in my presence, now come buy something."
And what do they say? They're gonna have to say we can't do it. And for the first time in a long time, they'll recognize their own need, their own incapacity to do something that is so necessary. What they needed they couldn't find at their world-renowned banking center, their luxurious shopping malls and markets or their high tech medical district. What they needed they could only find in the Lord Jesus Christ. What do they need to do? They need to set aside the golden cup of their pride and take off the purple and Scarlet lusts of their flesh and put the ointment on the lust of their eyes. They need to repent. Jesus tells them to be zealous. And the idea of being zealous is to get fired up about something. He's trying to light a fire under them, discipline them, paddle their behind a little bit, to get them to wake up. He wants them to change.
What does repentance look like in Laodicea? It might look like setting aside some of their pet projects and ministries and looking out and seeing where the real needs are and getting engaged there. It might look like supporting those who are the least among them, those who are broken and ruined. It might look like engaging the world around them with their resources. Think of what Jesus has said in the gospels. He says on one hand, "Woe to you who are rich." He pronounces curses upon the rich not because they're rich, but because of their ambivalence and their arrogance.
At the same time he commands those who are rich to use their wealth to make friends. Use your wealth to make friends. You can do that individually, we can do that as a congregation. Use our wealth to make friends, to engage the world where there's need and win people to Christ. Use the resources that God has given us to bless the world, to be a blessing to others. And in that way, we are faithful stewards of what God has given us. This is what Jesus wants for the church at Laodicea. He comes to them and notice what he says, very painful part of this letter. He acknowledges that they have kicked him out of the church.
So he comes to them and he's like, "Behold, I'm standing at the door, I'm knocking, I'm trying to get back in, you've driven me out, I'm trying to get back in. You've replaced me with Jezebel, you've replaced me with the world, but I'm trying to get back in. And why would he do that? Notice what he says in this letter. He says, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come into him and eat with him and he with me." why does Jesus say this?
Well earlier in the letter, he said to them that he loved them. He reminded them that he loved them. He wants them to know that he doesn't hate them. He's upset with them, he's angry with them, he is bothered by what they're doing, but if he didn't care about them, he wouldn't say anything to them about their situation. And he uses the word love in this letter, not the word agape which means ‘I love you unconditionally, do whatever you wanna do it's all gonna be good, it's fine.’ Now he says, “I love you like a brother. I love you like a friend and you've kicked me out.”
Years ago I was in a ministry where I was having trouble with a particular family in the church. They were causing trouble in the congregation and I asked them if I could come visit and they said, yes. And we set a time for me to visit. It was cold and rainy and I went, parked outside the house, walked up to the door, knocked on the door, no answer. I knocked again, no answer. I knocked again, the door cracked open. They said, "We're busy right now, can you wait?" And they left me standing in this cold drizzly rain.
And I waited and waited and waited until they finally let me in. Jesus stands knocking at the door of the church in Laodicea. We don't know if they let him in or not, but what we do know is that Jesus was looking for a way to get into a bad church. As a pastor, I learn a lot from these letters about how to shepherd a flock. And one of the things I love learning about Jesus here is that as angry as he is with his church, he loves this church. And he's not giving up on a bad church, he is trying to find a way into a bad church when many pastors would be looking for a way out of a bad church. Jesus is standing at the door and knocking. And where does this idea come from?
It comes from the Song of Solomon of all places. It comes from the Song of Solomon, it's an echo of the Song of Solomon where the Church says to the Lord, "I slept but my heart was awake. A sound, but my beloved is knocking. Open to me my sister, my love, my dove, my perfect one." This is what Jesus says to the church at Laodicea, this is what he says to us. "Open to me my sister, my love, my dove, my perfect one."
Tragically in the song of Solomon, the church hesitates. She doesn't rush to the door and welcome him and receive him. In fact, she says, "I opened to my beloved, but my beloved had turned and gone. My soul failed me when he spoke. I sought him, but found him not. I called him, but he gave no answer." Today if you hear Christ knocking on the door of this church, knocking on the door of your family, knocking on the door of your heart, do not delay in rushing to open that door. Your beloved, your friend, your brother has come to you, let him in.
The promise is that when you let him in, he's not going to wreck shop, he's not going to throw a fit, he's not going to turn the house upside down. What does he say? "I'm gonna come in and we're gonna eat together." We're gonna get our feet under the same table, we're gonna be in fellowship again. Every week we come to this table with the same promise that Jesus offers the church at Laodicea. We come to this table because this is where Jesus has promised to meet us in our need. He's promised to restore fellowship with us.
And so I encourage you to stay dressed for action, to keep your lamps burning and be like a people who are waiting for their Lord to come home so that we may open the door to him at once when he comes and he knocks. Blessed are those servants whom the master finds awake when he comes. Truly, I say to you, he will dress himself for service and have them reclined at the table and he will come and he will serve them.
And even now as we come to this table, know that it is not your pastors that are serving you. In and of ourselves we are serving you on behalf of the Lord Jesus who in the spirit of Christ is the one who is actually calling you to this table, feeding you bread and wine and giving you the body and blood of Christ so that you can be restored and renewed in his grace. And let us approach the table with these things in mind.
