We have come to the last of the letters to the seven churches in Revelation 2-3: the church in Laodicea. As I observed when we began this sermon series, it is slightly misleading to call these "letters," because the entire book of Revelation is a letter to these seven churches. Revelation 2-3 contains seven prophecies from Christ for each of these churches of Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey). Jesus speaks these words of prophecy, both in Revelation 2-3 and in the book as a whole, in order to equip these churches (and the church throughout history, which they represent) for their prophetic mission as lampstands to the world. As we have seen, many of these churches are flirting with the world to such an extent that their witness is becoming ineffective. This was certainly the case in Laodicea, the only church that receives no positive words from Jesus. For them, Jesus only has words of rebuke and a call to repent. Turn with me now to our sermon text, Revelation 3:14-22. This is the Word of God. Listen carefully.

Jesus speaks to the church at Laodicea as the Amen, the faithful and true witness. This title is probably drawn from Isaiah 65:16, where God is called the "God of Amen." The Hebrew word Amen is related to a verb that means "to be reliable or faithful." As the God of Amen, the one true God is utterly reliable. He keeps His Word. When Jesus applies this title to Himself, He is saying that He, as God the Son, is also completely reliable and trustworthy. He bears faithful testimony to God, and the words He is about to say to this church are absolutely true. In fact, Jesus’ identity as "the Amen" sets Him in contrast to the church in Laodicea. Jesus is fully trustworthy, fully truthful, and fully reliable, while the church in Laodicea was proving itself to be unfaithful to her Lord.

Jesus also says that He is "the beginning of God’s creation." What does this mean? Certainly not that Jesus is a created being, since Jesus is a member of the Godhead and has existed from all eternity. We find some help from a close parallel with a passage in Paul’s letter to the Colossians. Colossae was Laodicea’s next-door neighbor, so it is very likely that the church in Laodicea would have been familiar with Paul’s letter to the Colossians. In Colossians 1:18, Paul describes Jesus as "the beginning, the firstborn from the dead." This is also reflective of another passage in Revelation, chapter 1 verse 5, where Jesus calls himself "the firstborn of the dead." Both of these passages are talking about Jesus’ resurrection. This helps us understand what Jesus meant by calling Himself "the beginning of God’s creation." It means that the resurrected Jesus, who is the "firstborn from the dead, is the beginning of God’s new creation. He already has a new creational body, the kind of body that God promises to give to all of His people on the day when He consummates His kingdom. Jesus speaks to the church in Laodicea as the beginning of God’s new creation, and this has a bearing on how they ought to be living their lives. The Scriptures tell us that Christians have been raised with Christ and that our lives are hidden with Him even now (Colossians 3:1ff). By virtue of our union with Christ through faith, we are new creation people right now, and this reality should make us distinct from the world around us. This was something that the church in Laodicea desperately needed to hear.

As I noted earlier, Laodicea is the only church of the seven to receive no positive affirmation from Jesus. They were in serious trouble. Jesus describes their problem this way: they are neither cold nor hot, but are "lukewarm." This description is drawn from a particular feature about the location of the city of Laodicea. One of its neighboring cities was Hieropolis, where they had a hot spring that was believed to have medicinal value. Another neighboring city, Colossae, was noted for its cold water that was especially good for drinking. In those two cities, the water, whether hot or cold, was useful. It fulfilled an important purpose. But in Laodicea, things were quite different. Laodicea did not have easy access to water and had to pipe it in from hot springs to the south. This water arrived in Laodicea lukewarm, and it was probably not very healthy to drink. Compared to the water in Hieropolis and Colossae, this kind of water was almost good for nothing.

That was how Jesus assessed the situation of the church in Laodicea. In His estimation, they were almost good for nothing. Notice the irony here. The church itself thinks that it is vibrant and healthy, saying, "I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing" (3:17). But that attitude betrayed the extent to which they had been infected by the mindset of their surrounding culture. Laodicea was renowned for its wealth. It was located at the convergence of several major trade routes, enabling it to become a major economic center, boasting scores of wealthy citizens. In fact, Laodicea was so affluent and independent-minded that once, when the city was severely damaged by an earthquake, they declined the offer of imperial funds to help with rebuilding efforts. Laodicea was a proudly self-sufficient city. It was also a pagan city, with a thoroughly pagan culture. Like other pagan cities of its day, Laodicea’s economic system was intertwined with its cultic system. In order for Christians to attain material prosperity in a city like Laodicea, they would have to compromise with that city’s idolatrous culture.

According to Jesus, the church in Laodicea had attained material prosperity, and they apparently viewed this as a sign of God’s favor. They had bought into a version of the "health-and-wealth" gospel: the idea that wealth or success is a sign of God’s blessing. Of course, the good things that we enjoy in life are good gifts from God, and we ought to continually thank Him for them. But it is a logical fallacy to conclude that prosperity is a proof of God’s blessing. Many ungodly people prosper in this world. There can be many other factors that lead to prosperity or success. There were certainly other factors in Laodicea. Clearly, this church had become prosperous by compromising with their city’s idolatrous culture.

This meant that they were not fulfilling their role as a lampstand. They were not functioning as God’s light to the world, because they had become too much like the world. They were evaluating themselves by the wrong standard, by a worldly standard of success, when they should have been evaluating themselves by the standard of Jesus Christ, the Amen, the faithful and true witness. They were lukewarm Christians, good for nothing, and they were in danger of being vomited out of Jesus’ mouth.

This is harsh language. We have seen these kinds of warnings throughout our study of Revelation 2-3. It is important to recognize that these warnings do not imply that true Christians can lose their salvation. However, they do teach us something about the nature of saving faith: genuine faith, the faith that God works in His people, is faith that perseveres, faith that remains faithful. But the church in Laodicea was not exhibiting persevering faith. Theirs was a compromised faith. They needed to repent, or else they would cease to be a true church.

This is why Jesus says, "I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, that you may be rich, and white garments to clothe you and to keep the shame of your nakedness from being seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, that you may see." This church, like the pagans in Laodicea, had a self-sufficient attitude. They needed to recognize that Jesus is the only source of true riches, the only source of blessing from God. They needed to repent of their self-sufficiency and become increasingly dependent upon Christ as their source of spiritual life.

Even though Jesus’ words to this church are quite harsh, they are not words of judgment – at least not yet. They are words of discipline. Discipline, when rightly practiced, always has a positive goal. The purpose of discipline is not punishment, but correction. Discipline is not motivated by frustration or anger, but by love. Jesus Christ loves His people, and so He exercises corrective discipline in our lives. Jesus was exercising corrective discipline toward the church in Laodicea. He loved them, and this led Him to correct them. They needed to heed His correction and repent of their self-sufficiency and pride.

And so Jesus says, "Here I am, I stand at the door and knock." This verse is frequently cited as an evangelistic text, with Jesus depicted as standing at the door of the unbeliever’s heart, knocking and asking to be let inside. The problem with this is that Jesus isn’t speaking to non-Christians in this passage. He is speaking to the church in Laodicea. Jesus is knocking at the door of a church. If this is not about evangelism, what does it mean? As surprising as it may seem, there are a number of parallels between the wording in this verse and a verse in the Old Testament book that we call Song of Songs, or Song of Solomon. Song of Songs 5:2 says this: "I was asleep but my heart was awake. A voice! My beloved was knocking: ‘Open to me, my sister, my darling, my dove, my perfect one! For my head is drenched with dew, my locks with the damp of the night.’" The poem depicts a husband knocking on the door of the bedchamber so that his wife can welcome him home and express her love for him. This background fits quite well with what we see in our passage. Jesus appears at the door of this church as a husband, and the church is His bride. Jesus already has a marital relationship (or a covenantal relationship) with this church. He knocks on the door as her rightful husband, not as a prospective suitor. He is calling His church to be renewed in her covenantal relationship with Him. This is a call to covenant renewal, a call for this church to renew their fellowship with Jesus.

This is a vital need, not just for the church in Laodicea, but for all Christians. We need to be continually renewed in our fellowship with Jesus Christ. How does this happen? Do we need to pursue special "mountain-top" experiences to recharge our spiritual batteries? Such moments can certainly be very meaningful, but our Lord knows that we need far more than the occasional jolt that those kinds of experiences can provide. We need to be renewed in our relationship with the Lord on a regular basis. This is why God calls us to worship together on the Lord’s Day, on Sunday, each and every week. Corporate worship is a service of covenant renewal. It is an occasion when God serves us by reaffirming His covenant relationship with us. This is evident in the heavenly liturgy described in Revelation 4-5. This heavenly worship service retells the story of God’s covenantal dealings with His people, climaxing in the vision of Jesus as the slain Lamb, who by His blood has ransomed men for God. If heavenly worship is a service of covenant renewal, then the same is true of earthly worship, because the Bible teaches that worship on earth is to be patterned after worship in the heavenly sanctuary. Weekly worship with God’s people is the regular occasion when we are renewed in our relationship with Jesus Christ. Think about what happens in worship:

1. As we assemble to worship, we are reminded that it is God who has called us to Himself to be His people.

 

2. As we humbly approach our holy God in worship, we are reminded that we are sinners, and that we can only come into His presence through the cleansing blood of Jesus Christ.

 

3. As we listen to God’s Word read and explained, we are reminded of what God has done for us, and of what He requires of us as His people.

 

4. As we partake of the bread and the cup at the Lord’s Table, we are reminded of our complete dependence upon Christ as our source of life, and of the rich fellowship that we enjoy with Him and with one another.

 

5. And, as we receive God’s blessing at the close of the service, we are reminded that we go forth with God and in God’s name, to serve Him in everything that we do.

Worship is the occasion when God regularly renews His covenant with His people.

We need this regular renewal if we are going to persevere in faith. The church in Laodicea needed this kind of renewal if they were going to be conquerors. You can see that the word ‘conquer’ appears at the end of each of the messages to the churches. But the meaning of this call to conquer is not specified in Revelation 2-3. Instead, what it means to conquer becomes clear in the rest of the book of Revelation, climaxing in the vision of the New Jerusalem in Revelation 21:7, where God says, "He who conquers shall have this heritage, and I will be his God and he shall be my son." New Testament scholar Richard Bauckham explains this call to conquer in these words:

If you’ve read through the book of Revelation, you know that the battle it describes is the stuff of nightmares: demonic riders, monstrous beasts, a dragon, and much more. This is not just about the end of the world. This is the battle that all of God’s people, throughout history, are engaged in. We are continually pressured to compromise with the world and to adapt to its beliefs, its methods, and its practices. This is nothing less than the temptation to worship the beast and receive its mark upon our foreheads. We are not playing games here. The warfare we are engaged in is real warfare, even if it cannot be seen by our physical eyes. In fact, this is why God gave us the vivid imagery contained in the book of Revelation – to shock us into seeing the real nature of the world that is pressuring us to adapt to its ways. God gave us the book of Revelation so that we might be conquerors in this battle.