©2003 Larry Huntsperger Peninsula Bible Fellowship

05/18/03

On The Outside Looking In

Revelation 3:14-22

5/18/03 On The Outside Looking In

REV 3:14 ¶ "To the angel of the church in Laodicea write: ¶ The Amen, the faithful and true Witness, the Beginning of the creation of God, says this:

REV 3:15 ¶ 'I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot; I wish that you were cold or hot.

REV 3:16 'So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of My mouth.

REV 3:17 'Because you say, "I am rich, and have become wealthy, and have need of nothing," and you do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked,

REV 3:18 I advise you to buy from Me gold refined by fire so that you may become rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself, and that the shame of your nakedness will not be revealed; and eye salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see.

REV 3:19 'Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline; therefore be zealous and repent.

REV 3:20 'Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me.

REV 3:21 'He who overcomes, I will grant to him to sit down with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne.

REV 3:22 'He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.'"

From the passage I just read

those of you who are with us on a regular basis

have probably guessed that we are going to take a short break

from the study of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians

that we have been involved in for the past several months.

We are going to take this short break

mostly because portions of the passage I just read

have been much on my mind during the past few weeks

and I just wanted to take a morning to share with you

some of the thoughts that have been churning around inside me.

We have been in this passage once before in our life together as a church.

It was a little over five years ago

when we were just beginning our study of the book of Revelation.

That’s a long ways back

so it will help if I give you background on what’s going on in this passage.

The book of Revelation

is John’s record of a remarkable experience that he was allowed to have in the final days of his life.

At the time of this revelation

John was the last living member of the that band of 12 disciples chosen by the Lord.

He was, without dispute,

the most reliable and authoritative voice in the church of God.

In the first chapter of the book of Revelation

John shares with us how the risen Christ appeared to Him in physical form

and prepared him for the revelation that was to follow.

He told John He was going to reveal to Him

both information that bore directly on things taking place now,

and information that dealt with things that were to take place in the future.

And then He went on to tell John

that he had specific messages for 7 first century churches.

They were all local fellowships

that were in existence in that first century world,

but they were far more than that.

They were selected by the Lord

because each one of them pictured special conditions and situations

in which local churches would find themselves

throughout the remainder of church history.

There are many Bible scholars who believe

that these seven churches picture the chronological progression of church history

from the time of Christ

up to the return of Christ to this earth.

Though I don’t hold to this in a rigid way,

I must admit that there are some striking parallels

between what we have seen throughout church history

and what we see as we move through these seven churches.

And the words I read when we first started

are the Lord’s words to the seventh and final church.

Whether or not this is an accurate description of the Church throughout the entire world today

is something that can be debated,

but I will say that what we see pictured in this church at Laodicea

does show a remarkable parallel to the organized Christian religion

that exists in the United States today.

What our Lord has given us in these messages to the churches

is intended to serve as a mirror in which we can see ourselves more accurately.

And before we go any farther here

it might help if we keep in mind

that the way Christ approaches His people

and His Church

is radically different from the way our culture approaches the church.

Our culture teaches us

that anything

and anyone who takes up residence under the umbrella of religion

is entitled to a measure of respect and honor.

Even with all of the antireligious sentiment that has entered into our thinking in the past few generations,

as a culture we still view churches as being forces within the community

that contribute to greater morality,

and as such deserve a measure of respect.

We are taught by our culture

to be respectful

and accepting

and reverent toward all forms of religion.

It is the American way.

Christ, on the other hand,

has no respect for or toleration of any group,

or organization,

or individual who uses Him or His name for their own ends.

He does not look at the Kenai Peninsula

and think to Himself, “How nice! There are more than a hundred different groups there who identify themselves with Me.”

In His comments to this church at Laodicea the first two things that strike me so powerfully

are first of all Christ’s statement that he will spit them out of His mouth,

and secondly the obvious fact that He personally is not inside the church organization,

He is on the outside, looking for individuals within that organization who will hear His knock

and let Him into their lives.

Now, for this passage to make any sense,

it is essential that we understand

who these words are spoken to.

These words of Christ

are not spoken to individual Christians.

They are spoken to the organized religious system

that has grown up in His name.

Christ is not threatening to spit any individual Christian out of His mouth.

He is talking about His relationship

with the organized Christian religion

that has grown up in His name.

In fact, there is a powerful contrast in these verses

between Christ’s relationship with Christian organizations

and His relationship with individual believers.

I’ll come back to this again in a few minutes,

but for right now let me just point out the contrast.

His words to the organization carry with them

the warning of strong consequences

if the values, priorities, and perspective of the organization does not change.

Simply stated,

He tells them He will utterly reject the organizational structure

as a tool through which He accomplishes His work

unless there is a dramatic change.

But to the individuals within that organization

His message is dramatically different.

To the individuals He say,

REV 3:20 Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me.

And before I move on

I want to share with you

two misconceptions I was given during my early years as a Christian.

The first is that there were times in my early Christian life when I was told

that Jesus’ threat that He would “...spit you out of My mouth...”

was a threat He was making against the individual believer.

The speaker would present vivid descriptions of the “lukewarm Christian”,

descriptions that struck terror in the hearts of every young believer present.

And then the terrifying blow would fall

with those words of Christ promising that He would spit us out of His mouth if we didn’t change our ways.

The fact that Christ’s apparent words to the believer here

seemed to be in direct contradiction with His words throughout the rest of the New Testament

never seemed to concern these speakers,

words such as His promise that,

HEB 13:5 "I will never desert you, nor will I ever forsake you,"

or His assurance through Paul that,

ROM 8:1 Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

or His assurance that He Himself has... “(COL 2:14) canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.”

The suggestion that Christ was going to climb up on that cross once again,

this time with a hammer with which to pull out the nail holding our certificate of debt to that cross,

and was then going to take that certificate of debt

and nail it onto our foreheads before He spit us out of His mouth

was something that seemed only reasonable and justified to us

given the degree of our obvious offensiveness to Him.

The truth is

these words were not spoken by Christ to any individual believer.

They were spoken by Christ

to the organizational structure

that used His name and His words for its own ends

while denying through its arrogance and materialism

the very heart of the truth about what His life within us accomplishes.

And His message to that organizational structure is clear -

He tells them He will no longer work through them

to accomplish His work on the earth.

And the second misconception about this passage that I was given in the past

was the suggestion that this passage is talking about Christ knocking on the door of the nonchristian,

asking for entrance into the nonbeliever’s life.

Now, it is certainly true that Christ does do just exactly that.

He eagerly seeks to reveal Himself to every human being

in a way that invites each individual to turn to Him in faith.

But that is not what’s going on here in Revelation.

The remarkable thing taking place in this passage

is that Jesus Christ tells us

there will come a time when He will be on the outside of the organized Christian religion,

knocking on the door of those organizational structures that claim Him as their leader,

seeking individual believers within those organizations

who will respond to Him, let Him in, and enter into fellowship with Him.

I have been deeply involved in the Christian world in our culture for more than 35 years now.

For more than 20 of those years

I have served as a pastor of an organized local church fellowship.

I am certainly no prophet,

nor do I claim to be,

(although I did know with absolute certainty

that the Lord was NOT going to return on New Years day 2000) :),

but I will say that, on the basis of my past 35 years of involvement in the Christian world,

I honestly no longer understand or identify with much of what I see being done in our society in the name of Christ,

and I personally believe that in a great many instances

what we have being described in this passage in Revelation

accurately pictures what exists in the world of organized Christian religion in our nation today.

Throughout the past 2000 years of church history

Biblical prophecy has, for obvious reasons, been a topic about which Christians have always been fascinated.

Our Lord Himself told us to watch for the signs of His return with eagerness and anticipation.

Most of the time when we get into these discussions

we focus our attention on the events in the Middle East,

and the growing movement of our world toward a central world government,

and the increase of wars and earthquakes and ethnic violence in our world.

But if it is true that these seven churches in Revelation 2 and 3

do present us with a prophetic blueprint of the history of the organized church in the world,

I find these words of our Lord Jesus Christ to the church at Laodicea

to be one of the most significant prophetic indicators given to the people of God.

And the thing that’s so amazing about this passage

is the realization that it is not doctrinal unfaithfulness

that ultimately thrusts Christ outside of the organized church.

There is nothing in these verses that suggests

that these people at Laodicea were denying the deity of Christ,

or the virgin birth,

or Christ’s payment for our sins through His death,

or His literal, physical resurrection from the dead.

Their doctrinal correctness seems to have been fine.

It was not their doctrine that caused their separation from their Lord,

it was their heart response to Him.

If you were here two weeks ago

you may remember that, during our discussion time following our teaching,

I made some comments about the true nature of doctrine in the Christian’s life.

I mentioned that, in God’s design, Biblical doctrine was never intended to be an organized system of beliefs that existed apart from the Person of Christ Himself and our ongoing personal relationship with Him.

All true Christian doctrine should be simply an extension of,

or more correctly a description of our relationship with our Lord

and our understanding of who He is and how He relates to us.

I gave the example of the doctrine of eternal security.

The doctrine of eternal security, as it is commonly used in our church world,

states that once a person is “saved”

that person can never loose their salvation.

In that discussion two weeks ago I suggested that

if we could have talked with the Apostle Peter in the first century

and asked him if he accepted the doctrine of eternal security

he would have looked back at us with an expression that said, “What are you talking about?”

And then I think he would have gone on to say,

“Well, now, if you’re asking me, ‘Do I think my Lord Jesus will ever turn His back on me,

or walk away from me,

or kick me out of His family

when I do some stupid thing,

or mess things up really bad,

or fall back into one of my old sin patterns,

or when I stand up before the entire world and three times publicly deny that I even know Him,’

well, OF COURSE NOT! He’s not that kind of God.

You see, his “doctrine” was simply an expression of what he had discovered about his Lord as he lived with Him.

I mention this again here in the context of Christ’s words to the church at Laodicea

because I find it fascinating to notice

that Christ does not attack this church

because of their doctrinal system.

It is not their beliefs,

it is their attitudes, and the deeds that result from them,

that brings about their separation from the King they claim to serve.

And in our remaining few minutes this morning

I want us to look at those attitudes,

and then at the attitudes Christ offers them as an alternative.

The Lord’s complaint against them comes in verse 3:17.

'Because you say, "I am rich, and have become wealthy, and have need of nothing," and you do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked,...

I am rich,

and have become wealthy,

and have need of nothing...

Do you see what they have done?

They have used the Person,

and the name,

and the message of Jesus Christ

to build for themselves

a successful little empire.

We’ve got the right message,

we’ve got the right product,

we’ve got the right system,

we are a success!

Did you know we could do that with Christ?

We not only can,

we do it all over our nation.

To a great degree

Christianity is an industry in the U.S. today,

an industry driven by the same basic success goals and tools

that drive any other industry.

Nearly every week

I receive some new mailing

from some new organization

that, for a fee, promises to teach me how to increase our church attendance by 30%,

or how to increase our “stewardship” (Christian lingo for more money) by 40%,

or how to successfully manage that building campaign.

I am rich, and have become wealthy, and have need of nothing...

But then, look at the truth.

Look at the heart attitudes the Lord is seeking in His people.

Look at what He will find in the minds and hearts of those individuals who will be able to hear His knock and let Him in.

...and you do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked...

Do you know what that is?

That is a correct and accurate description of each of us

without the life of our Lord being lived through us.

It is that heart attitude

that the Spirit of God seeks to bring each of us to

in daily preparation for our walk with the King.

And notice carefully that there is nothing there about our worth.

He is not talking about our worth, our value,

He’s talking about our condition.

And of course it’s absolutely true.

Apart from His daily life within us

under all of our facade,

we are indeed wretched,

and filled with pain we don’t dare face,

and poor in spirit beyond measure,

and blind to all that’s true,

and naked before our God.

But that isn’t where this whole thing ends.

Our Lord never points out a problem

without also offering the solution.

REV 3:18 I advise you to buy from Me gold refined by fire so that you may become rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself, and that the shame of your nakedness will not be revealed; and eye salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see.

He makes three specific recommendations,

and we’ll end this morning with these.

And before I mention each of them,

let me just say that for all of us who hear His knock,

the way we will hear it

is by our recognizing the truth that, apart from our King we are indeed wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked.

And when we answer that knock,

when we respond to Him,

it is these three things we will find Him bringing into our lives,

into our awareness in our walk with Him.

First, I advise you to buy from Me gold refined by fire so that you may become rich.

We don’t have time to trace out the parallel passages

in which that concept is explained.

If you would like to read one of them on your own,

I would suggest 1 Peter 1:3-9

But what He’s talking about

is that process by which our Lord rebuilds our character

by His walking with us through pain.

It is the nature of our flesh to avoid pain at all costs.

That’s why we avoid facing unresolved issues within ourselves at all costs.

That’s why our flesh nature will nearly always choose what feels good

rather than what’s right.

But the offer of our Lord

is the offer of a kind of wealth,

a richness of the human spirit

that can only come through our being willing to take His hand

and walk with Him through pain.

There are changes that take place within ourselves,

and knowledge about ourselves and about out Lord

that cannot come into our lives any other way.

It’s no wonder, of course,

that this is not a central message of the Christian industry surrounding us.

It simply doesn’t sell well.

Our Lord’s second offer is the offer of white garments so that you may clothe yourself, and that the shame of your nakedness will not be revealed.

He is talking about the garments of His own righteousness.

He is talking about His creating within us

the unshakable understanding

that whatever good comes out of us

is the result of His life in us

and His Spirit choosing to work through us.

And here again

this is a truth that does not fit well with the Christian industry.

The industry says, “Look what we have done in the name of Christ!

Look at what you could do if you tried harder.”

But the real thing,

the real product of the grace of God within us grows out of the clear knowledge

that either Christ lives through us on a daily basis or there is no hope.

And then His final offer to us is the offer of eye salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see.

And what He wants us to see

is the way things really are.

He wants us to see our daily, desperate dependance upon Him,

upon His love,

upon His grace,

upon His ability to work both in and through us.

He wants us to see our utter helplessness to accomplish anything of value

apart from His life within us.

That’s what our King is offering.

That’s all He’s offering,

and when we see it correctly it’s all we ever really want.

And with that He then ends His words with that remarkable invitation:

REV 3:20 'Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me.

REV 3:21 'He who overcomes, I will grant to him to sit down with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne.

REV 3:22 'He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.'"