Trust in God and not yourself.
The Seven Churches • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Transcript
Introduction
· Gospel Presentation
Scripture
Father God, we thank You for Who You are. A great Big God who sees each and every one of us here and cares deeply about us. We ask this day, as we are continuing in this time of worship to You, reading Your Word and hearing Your Word, that You refine us with it. Mold us, make us, shape us, rearrange us so that we can more like You, and more made into the image of Christ. Help us be a people who love You and love others so much, that we are moved into action by whatever it is You are going to show us about Yourself today and what that means in our lives. Help us do this, because all to often our selfish and sinless flesh war against our will to follow Yours. As we are doing this, and as we are coming into Your Word today, we ask that You take away any distraction that we may have, and make it go as far away as it possible can, because we want to see and we want to know You better. It’s in these things that I ask and in Jesus Christ’s Holy and precious name that I pray, Amen.
14 “Write to the angel of the church in Laodicea: Thus says the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the originator, of God’s creation: 15 I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were cold or hot. 16 So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I am going to vomit you out of my mouth. 17 For you say, ‘I’m rich; I have become wealthy and need nothing,’ and you don’t realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked. 18 I advise you to buy from me gold refined in the fire so that you may be rich, white clothes so that you may be dressed and your shameful nakedness not be exposed, and ointment to spread on your eyes so that you may see. 19 As many as I love, I rebuke and discipline. So be zealous and repent. 20 See! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.
21 “To the one who conquers I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I also conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne.
22 “Let anyone who has ears to hear listen to what the Spirit says to the churches.”
Context
Just to give you an idea about where we are going, next week we will finish up this sermon series on Rev chapter 4 and possibly 5 (I’m not really settled if it will be one or both just yet), so please in your personal devotional time this week, go ahead and read those two chapters. After this series, we will enter a Christmas Holiday sermon series.
This week, we turn our attention to the last of the 7 churches, Laodicea; the church of lukewarm faith. Something to know about this city and this church is that they were very wealthy. In fact, Laodicea stood as a town that was itself made for wealth and trade, as it was a major crossroad town for the Roman empire. As such, it was not a naturally strategically made town with things that you would expect a large wealthy town to have (like a port or a natural water source being nearby). Rather, this town was made, it was created just for the sake of wealth and trade, so it was chosen just because of it’s location, and not it’s ability to sustain life well. This led to one critical issue for this town, it lacked any source of water. As such, because of their great wealth, they were able to literally pipe in water (both from Roman aquiducts and pipes made out of clay) from sources far away. This caused an interesting situation in this town, despite its riches, having unique trade items, medical facilities (some that specialized in eye treatment), large banks, and wealth; they had disgusting water. This water was not only lukewarm (neither hot nor cold) because it had to travel from both cold locations a far ways away or warm locations a far ways away, but the clay pipes collected minerals in them, that would make the water taste terrible. Has anyone ever had sulfur water before? Well, lets just say that sulfur water would have been much preferable over this water. As you can see, this town had a way of providing for itself because of it’s great monetary wealth. However, as we can see from this one example, this isn’t always desirable and is not always the path that God wants to take in our life, especially not when this self-reliance leads to a lack of reliance on Him. This is a message that rings true for all of history, ourselves included. So, when looking at this church and the other churches;
Just like we said last week and every other week, these churches we have looked at are representatives of all churches everywhere, they represent the individual expressions of the church (ie, the local church, like us) and give real life warnings, commendations, punishments, and rewards from Christ Himself. We have much to learn from these letters to the churches from Christ. We have a lot to learn from the heart and mind of Christ, what He loves and what He desires for each and every one of His churches. So, as He is sending this out, we must do what the end of each of these letters end with, that we are to hear what The Spirit says to the churches. So, let’s dive in and look at the text where From the text, I want you to reflect on these calls from Christ as He calls us to trust in God and not ourselves.
Message
Christ calls out wicked wealth
14 “Write to the angel of the church in Laodicea: Thus says the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the originator, of God’s creation: 15 I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were cold or hot. 16 So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I am going to vomit you out of my mouth. 17 For you say, ‘I’m rich; I have become wealthy and need nothing,’ and you don’t realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked.
Christ begins his address to the church at Laodicea. As with the other churches, Christ describes Himself and His power and authority of them. Noticing here though. Notice how Christ had nothing positive or no bright point or small group within the church that he could address positively, as He did some of the other churches. Instead, He starts off and only gives words of stern warning and displeasure. He tells them, I know your works; and there is nothing good about them. Just like the nasty lukewarm water that your town has, I want to vomit, to puke you out of my mouth. You should be like nearby towns that have either refreshing cool mountain water or soothing warm hot spring water. You are disgusting, and I take no pleasure in you. Listen to what you say about yourself, you talk on, you boast on your own wealth and ability to provide and do works without me. You think you are rich, you think you have no needs; but I say otherwise. I say that your needs are great, you think you are good but you are bad, you are in a sorry estate. You are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked. You are in the worst kind of state as a church, you are a church with no trust, faith or love of Me.
This seeking the wrong kind of wealth, wicked wealth, reminds me of a trend I used to see a lot when I worked at the bank. Where people would usually wind up losing big time. It was a scam really, that preyed upon people’s wants and desires to have money and wealth. Usually, there were to kinds of people that fell for this scam. The first group was young 20 something year old who wanted to be rich quickly and easily. The second group was those that were nearing retirement or were recently retired but didn’t have enough saved up for retirement but wanted to be rich. I saw a lot of these people, and they all fell for what a popular trend at the time, investing in what is called crypto- currency, often called bit-coin, a sort of digital currency. Well, in almost every circumstance that someone who didn’t try to work through a professional trader, the person would be scammed; and lose all of their money. Sometimes to the toon of 10s of thousands of dollars. It got so bad, that after a very short while, the bank did not allow any transactions to happen that had anything to do with any kind of cryptocurrency or bitcoin. These people, that fell for the scam, had their greedy hearts taken advantage of, they put their treasure in the wrong places and as a result wanted more and more, to the point that they were blinded by the idea of being filthy rich to what was obviously a scam. These people, though victims, were guilty of seeking greedy and wicked wealth.
We have to ask ourselves, where do I hold onto wicked wealth. Now, I know that no one in this room today is rich like the people in Laodicea. But, we do need to remember, that each person in this room has an extravagant wealth when compared to the rest of the world. As you will remember, at the beginning of the sermon series, we saw that the United States alone has twice the wealth of 180 nations combined. This fact means, that even though on the surface it may look like we are poor and not doing very well both as individuals and as a church, that actually we are doing very well when we consider ourselves and our church in the context of Christ’s kingdom across the whole earth. What I’m saying here is, that even though none of us here are filthy rich as compared with other Americans, we do not need to deceive ourselves and think that we are exempt from making the same mistake that Laodicea is, trusting in their own selves and resources and not God. Remember, one day, Christ will call out, will go through every sin, and this means He will even go through our own wickedness. One day, all wicked wealth will be called out. Let’s not be a people that are about having or desiring wealth, instead lets be a people that understand and know that
Christ calls to right wealth
18 I advise you to buy from me gold refined in the fire so that you may be rich, white clothes so that you may be dressed and your shameful nakedness not be exposed, and ointment to spread on your eyes so that you may see. 19 As many as I love, I rebuke and discipline. So be zealous and repent. 20 See! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.
Christ continues his address here. He says to them, instead of worrying about your own gold, your own riches, your own self-sufficiency, I advise you to come to my shop instead. Come and see what I have, it is much better, it is lasting. Seek the right kind of wealth, a wealth of faith in me, a wealth of trust in Me, a wealth of love for Me. Furthermore, know this, Know that every person that I love, will receive discipline and a rebuke. I love my church, I love you and I am calling you right now. Be zealous for your faith and repent from your wickedness. Then you will find and have true and right wealth. I am here, I want to be with You, but thus far all you have done is shut me out and left me out of your life. Hear my voice calling to you, and open the door (repent) and I will come to you and you will know my good graces and pleasure.
Believer and church, ask yourself and ask ourselves. What is the kind of wealth I am seeking and desiring. What is the kind of wealth we may be seeking or desiring. What is it that you desire more than anything in the world. I know all of us here know the Sunday School answer, Jesus, I want Jesus more than anything. BUT, honestly ask yourself. I want Jesus, I need Jesus, I want Jesus, but; if I had this, everything would be much better; then I wouldn’t have to worry. Answer that question, and their in lies a wealth that you are seeking. Yes, we know we are supposed to want and need Jesus, but do you have a wealth of faith, trust, love, and worship for Him; to the point that you don’t worry about anything else. Do you really want Jesus more than anything and are you prepared for the consequences of that and to put that into action?
As we have said time and time again, things that vie for love and affection that don’t deserve our attention over God; are often wrapped up in good things and good intents, but also have a dark side of lacking faith behind them. Believer, find those things; and don’t allow them to have power over you anymore! Christ has power, Christ has authority, He has the whole picture, and knows what’s really going on; so seek a wealth in Him instead, not a wealth that has left so much of the world dead; a wealth that is self-made and self-maintained. Instead, seek the treasure of the kingdom of God.
Christ and the Conquerors rule
21 “To the one who conquers I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I also conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne.
22 “Let anyone who has ears to hear listen to what the Spirit says to the churches.”
Christ gives here his last explanation of His rewards for conquerors to the church. Read it with me again He says in verse 21, 21 “To the one who conquers I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I also conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne. What does it mean that the conquerors will be at the right of Jesus on His throne? Well, just like with any other throne, this is a place of position and authority. It is place that only those that are worthy can be. It is a place that Christ would only allow those people that have sought to honor Him in and through their lives would be. Just as Jesus sits at the right of the Father, so the conquerors will get to do with Jesus. Hear this and know this churches everywhere. There is something great in store for those that make God their agenda, their priority, their number one. These are the ones that Honor Him, not self-reliant churches like ladocia. Not churches that county anything anything as more important than loving God, loving people, and making disciples; because these things bring God glory, and that is the whole reason we exist, to bring God and glory and in some small way be a reflection or projection of His glory on the earth. We are to magnify God in everything we do and every thought we have.
A pastor that like to listen to, called John Piper commented on this saying the Believers are to function as Telescopes, he says. “There are two kinds of magnifying: microscope magnifying and telescope magnifying. The one makes a small thing look bigger than it is. The other makes a big thing begin to look as big as it really is.
When David says, “I will magnify God with thanksgiving,” he does not mean, “I will make a small God look bigger than he is.” He means, “I will make a big God begin to look as big as he really is.”
We are not called to be microscopes. We are called to be telescopes. Christians are not called to be con-men who magnify their product out of all proportion to reality, when they know the competitor’s product is far superior. There is nothing and nobody superior to God. And so the calling of those who love God is to make his greatness begin to look as great as it really is. That’s why we exist, why we were saved, as Peter says in 1 Peter 2:9, “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”
The whole duty of the Christian can be summed up in this: feel, think, and act in a way that will make God look as great as he really is. Be a telescope for the world of the infinite starry wealth of the glory of God.”
So believers and church family, are you, are we conquerors? Ask yourself personally about your faith. Am I certain that I will be their, ruling with Christ one day? Do you have doubts or questions about your faith that need to be answered? If so, I’d love to know about them and help you answer them and pray for you about them. Also of vital importance, is the question that you or we may need to ask ourselves, do I believe everything that God has told me about Himself and what He can and will do in to and through us when our we are seeking His glory in everything. Sometimes this means digging really deep, often times it means not leaning on our own understanding and willingly letting God work in to and through you.
Conclusion
Beloved, you know these things. God has told you these, are you ready to do them. You know that Christ calls out wicked wealth, do you have some kind of hidden wicked wealth that you are holding onto? Because Christ calls to right wealth, we have to put away the wrong wealth and take on spiritual wealth; those that do will see Christ and the Conquerors rule.
As we contemplate this, I want to invite you; if you have not yet filled out your worksheet, the answers will be on the screen. Take a few moments to fill it out, consider it and the implications it has on us. Then, take a few moments in personal prayer about it. Also, as you go through the week, continue to pray as we have done today, and if anything comes to mind, write it down on your worksheet. After this few moments Then, I will lead us in a prayer to God that He will strengthen us, and give us all knowledge and wisdom as we seek His will for us. Don’t forget on your own time to work out your thoughts on the sheet, as very soon we will discuss what we have learned through this sermon series.
· Give 4-5 minutes to fill out worksheet and for prayer.
· Lead a prayer