Hope From the Word

Guest (Male): In today's society, there are many who are materially wealthy, yet spiritually bankrupt. Such was the case with the Laodiceans. We'll learn more about what Jesus had to say to them on today's broadcast of Hope from the Word.

Bill Luebkemann: You're not boiling hot is what he's saying. You don't have enthusiasm about what you believe. I mean, to really believe in the Lord, you'd think that the person would be enthusiastic about the God Almighty creator of the universe who died on a cross to redeem us from our sins. You'd think that would be good news. It is good news, and we should be excited about it. And what a curse empty religion is to the world.

Guest (Male): In the days of the Roman Empire, wealthy people who weren't born in Rome could buy their citizenship. As we're about to see on today broadcast, citizenship in heaven doesn't work that way. Laodicea was a wealthy city, but Jesus didn't want their money. He wanted their hearts. You're listening to Hope from the Word with Bill Lubkeman, senior pastor of Calvary Chapel of Marlton. We invite you now to turn to Revelation 3 as we bring you part two of our examination of the church at Laodicea.

Bill Luebkemann: There's lots of people out there promoting lots of things in the world today, maybe more now than there ever was. But the problem is most of them are not right. And what Jesus has to say is right. It says, these are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the ruler of God's creation. Look, some of your Bibles may actually have in there the beginning of God's creation. And that word beginning does not mean beginning as in first in time. Some people might look at this and say, oh, he's the beginning, so so he was the first one that God created.

But that 's not what it means. It doesn't mean that he was the first one that was created by God. It means that he is the source and origin of something. The the word for beginning here, the Greek word arch, it does not mean or relate to time. It relates to the source of something or the origin of something. It doesn't mean that Jesus was the first person created, but rather that he is the source and origin of everything else. And you can see that emphasized over in John chapter 1 verse 3 where it says, through him all things were made.

Without him nothing was made that has been made. You know, sometimes the word of God repeats things twice in a row, uh sometimes three times in a row. In this case, it seems to repeat it twice in a row followed by a negative confirmation that the opposite is not true. And when you see that happen, you figure the Lord wants you to understand this. This is something that's very important to you. And it's amazing today how many people don't understand it. It's no different than it was in the Old Testament uh in the days of of Saul, king of Israel.

There's one case where Samuel said to Saul, the Lord wants you to go and take that town, kill all the people, the animals, uh exterminate, burn it down, get rid of it. Don't leave anything left. And when Saul or when Samuel came to visit Saul sometime later, Saul said, we did everything you said. And Samuel said, well, why do I hear the bleeding of sheep? Oh, well, we just kept a few of the best sheep, you know. And we just kept a few of the best, but we got rid of everything else. But God said, get rid of all of it.

And we need to be thinking along those ways that we need to do the job completely, whatever God calls us to do. Here it says, through him all things were made. So we know first of all that everything that was made was made through him. And then just in case you didn't get that, it says, without him nothing was made that has been made. So somebody can say, well, how about this? Was this made by some other way? No. Without him nothing was made that was made. Everything came into existence through him. He's the source and origin of everything.

The ruler of God's creation, verse 15. 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 am about to spit you out of my mouth. Look, I know your deeds. He said that to a lot of these churches, and I keep emphasizing each week. You know, there there's nothing that we hide from God. He knows what we're all about. He knows how we're wired up. He knows what we're doing, what we're thinking, why we're doing it, the motive behind everything that we do.

He knows everything about everything. And he says to these people, I know what you're all about. I know your deeds. I know why you're doing your deeds. I know why the other people are doing their deeds. I know why your parents and your grandparents did what they do. I know the whole story. And I know that you're not cold and you're not hot. You're lukewarm, he says in the next verse. And this would have meant something to them because the water system here in this town of Laodicea, the water was brought in on an aqueduct 6 miles from hot springs.

And so when the water got to them, it was kind of lukewarm. It wasn't cold enough to be refreshing, and it wasn't hot enough to make tea out of it. It was just lukewarm. And these lukewarm water makes you want to you know not drink it. Who wants to drink lukewarm water? You have a hot water, you make a cup of tea. You have cold water, it's refreshing on a hot day. Lukewarm water is terrible. And they knew about that. They knew everything he writes here, they connect to something in their life, something in the way their city work there.

Out in California, Calvary Chapel's Bible College, they have hot springs on the premises. And it comes up out of the ground and runs over rocks, and they have it all landscaped very pretty, but it gives off this sulfur smell. You see steam rising, and it's way too hot to even touch it. It's like 140° or something where it comes out of the ground. And they have it going down into a pool. And eventually it gets down to a place where you can go in in your bathing suit and sit there and soak in kind of like a hot tub.

By the time it gets down there, it's it's cooler. But who would want to drink that water? I don't know. These people when they see lukewarm, a little light bulb is going to go off in their head just like our awful water here. The word for hot by the way is and it refers to the boiling point. Doesn't just mean a little warm, it means boiling hot. Boiling is the point when water changes to water vapor. And you can't drink it anymore. You can't drink it when it boiling anyway, but it's when it changes from a liquid form to a gas form.

And that's the word it's talking about. You're not boiling hot is what he's saying. You don't have enthusiasm about what you believe. I mean, to really believe in the Lord, you'd think that the person would be enthusiastic about the God Almighty creator of the universe who died on a cross to redeem us from our sins. You'd think that would be good news. It is good news. And we should be excited about it. And what a curse empty religion is to the world. Maybe the biggest curse that there is. And that's what these people had in this town, empty religion.

Even in America, the same thing. This place was a great commercial and trading center. They were prosperous. They were well-known. They were they were focused on the good life and how to keep the good life as long as possible, and they didn't want anything to get in the way of that. So it seems they wanted to keep the religious belief at arms length. It was as if they wanted to be respectable about their religion, but not be seen as fanatics. You know, we're okay here. We're respectable. We're doing it right. We follow Ten Commandments. We meet in church every week for an hour.

We're going through the motions, but we're not enthusiastic inside. We're not on fire for the Lord. And they want to keep the kooks out. And by the kooks by the way, they're referring to anybody with genuine faith in Christ, which even today they think you're a kook if you have genuine faith in Christ. Look, if you go to church on Sunday, that's okay, no problem. If you make a nice show of religiosity, that's excellent. Good to see it. That's good for people. One guy, a guy named Viscount Melbourne, he was heard to made this famous remark after hearing an evangelical sermon, he said this.

Things have come to a pretty pass when religion is allowed to invade private life. He didn't like it one bit. When he heard some kind of a sermon, I guess this was a couple hundred years ago or so, but he heard a sermon that struck him to the core and oh, we can't have it invading private life. We don't want it to change our actions. We don't want it to get inside of us and change who we are. Love your enemy. Oh, no. We we don't want to carry it that far, you know. Be kind to those who hurt you.

No, no. We can't be doing that. Be respectable on the outside, you know, but don't go too far on the inside. Go to church, feel good, keep up the image. But don't tell us we're going to go to hell if we don't believe that. Cuz you know, all religions are good. Even no religion is good. Whatever you feel is good, just so long as you're sincere at doing it. That's a great theory. It's not what the Bible says, but aside from that, just it's a great theory. And that's what these people were. They were lukewarm.

And the Lord says, look, I'd rather you be cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other. If they were a hot, that'd be great. If they were cold, at least they'd know their condition. The Lord would maybe work with that. Somebody who is lukewarm has just enough of the Lord to be uncomfortable on the world and just enough of the world to be uncomfortable with the Lord, kind of in between. And that's a bad place to be in cuz you know, you think you have enough, but you really don't. And you think you're doing great.

I'm doing great, everything going through the motions here, but you're really going to hell because you you're not on fire because the Lord has not really saved you because you really haven't accepted him completely. So because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I am about to spit you out of my mouth. Look, this wasn't a promise here. The nice thing about this is there's still a chance for them to be redeemed. He's not saying you're going to get spit out of my mouth. He says because you're lukewarm, I'm about to spit you out of my mouth.

In other words, you have a chance to change here before that happens. I'm about to do it, but there's going to be a chance to change. And by the way, the word for lukewarm and what it means is tepid. And you know, when your cup of tea gets tepid, you throw it out or you get some more hot water. You don't keep drinking it anymore. They knew about that because of their hot spring fed water supply as I said earlier. There really is no such thing as a lukewarm believer. Jesus said himself, you're either for me or you're against me.

There's no middle middle ground. Choose you this day, Joshua said, whom you will serve. And by the way, no decision is the same as the wrong decision. You either choose the righteous they if you if you purposely choose the wrong decision or you just don't choose the right decision, it's the same thing. It makes no difference. There is no middle ground. Verse 17, Jesus said to them, 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. They were rich and famous in a worldly sense, known for their wealth and their luxury and their medicine.

They were successful on their own. They felt that they needed nothing else. They said, we're doing just fine. Thank you very much. We have everything we need here, but they were simply putting their trust in the wrong things. And they had no idea how exceedingly desperate their situation was. They were poverty stricken. You've seen the pictures of the poor kids from Africa where all their bones are showing through because their body is so emaciated and there's almost no meat on the bones. And they were like this spiritually. And so is a lot of people today, not even knowing that they're at the point of death.

The sickness was sin, and the penalty was death. And they had no idea they were heading in that direction and getting there fast. Sooner or later, everyone realizes there are things in life that a human cannot deal with. You can be going to a lukewarm church, not going to any church at all. You can be living high on the hog in America today. That's hard to be doing today, but you can have your two SUVs and and your big house and and all all the things that you think you need and be doing really really well.

And sooner or later though, you're going to deal with spiritual things. And these people here were just putting it off. They were lukewarm about it. We'll get to it later, but sooner or later everybody has to deal with the issue of death sooner or later. I mean, have you ever heard anyone argue with a preacher at a funeral? I think not. Hey preacher, there's no God, there's no heaven, and I'm an atheist. No such person whatever nobody would ever say that. And death itself forces us to consider what comes next. And death is something that we all have to reckon with sooner or later, no matter how rich or famous we are.

There's a contrast here between our humanists and between these things of the spirit. Success from a human standpoint, it doesn't mean anything to the in the spirit. And you may very well be a complete failure. I mean, there's this story of the lady who was rich on Earth and never helped anybody out. And uh one day she died and she went to heaven and she was a believer and they said, we're going to take you to your house, you know. And they were going down the street passing all the big mansions with the manicured lawns and the fountains out front.

And they kept going and going and uh the mansions were getting a little smaller, you know. And a little smaller yet, and the lawns were a little smaller, and they were closer together. And they kept going and going and eventually they came to this very tiny little house with a very tiny postage stamp backyard, way on the outskirts of town. And they said to the lady, this is your house. And she protested. What do you mean this is my house? Well, the big house, how come this is all I got? And they said, well, we did the best we could, but this was all we could do with what you sent up here ahead of time.

And you know, you can't take it with you. There's that old Spanish proverb that says, uh shroud doesn't have a pocket on it. You know, you you can't take it with you, but you can send it on ahead. And what you do with the Lord here on Earth, material wealth does not equate to spiritual wealth. You can have one and not have the other. And the Lord saying to them here, 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.

Wretched, I mean who you know, who wants to be wretched, pitiful, to be pitied, that other people would feel sorry for them? But we no reason to feel sorry for me. I've got everything. I'm doing great. You don't need to feel sorry. You know, when we look at the unbelievers around the town, around the our relatives and family and friends and co-workers, and we we look at unbelievers who are doing well by the world standards and don't know about their Lord, we you know, we should love them and feel sorry for them and want to share the Lord with them.

We should never wish them. You know, I I hope they go to hell. They deserve it. We should never say that about anybody. We should feel pity for them and want to and want to see them get saved. And that's what the Lord is saying to them here. You're pitiful. You're poor when you think you're rich. You're blind when you think you have sight and you 're naked when you think you're clothed. And every one of these things applies to them in a particular way. This should be a wake-up call for these people. The good thing about what the Lord does is he always gives us the advice of what we need to remedy the situation.

And he begins that in verse 18. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire so you can become rich and white clothes to wear so you can cover your shameful nakedness and salve to put on your eyes so you can see. He's saying here, realize what the condition that you're in. And you can have real riches. Look, when he says, I counsel you to buy from me gold refined He he's not talking about buying your salvation. You all know that, right? He's not saying here, you know, take some of those assets that you're accumulating there and give it to me and I'll give you the salvation.

It doesn't mean that way at all. But buying that gold from him, he means come to me, put your faith to me, put your trust to me so that I can provide for you the real gold so that you can really become rich. And the real gold is everlasting life that he gives us. And we can become rich in him. And that then we'd be real. And he says, so you can become rich that you don't become you don't want to be look If you're already rich, you're not trying to become rich. These people thought they were rich, but they were really poor where it mattered.

And the Lord says, come to me so I can give you what's really important so you can be saved and become rich. And then you'll have white clothes to wear. In other words, you'll be cleaned of your sin. The white clothes, you'll be forgiven for your sin. And you can cover your shameful nakedness which represents their sin and their unsaved state. And salve to put on their eyes so they can see so that you can you can come to me and receive real sight and real covering for the really sinful condition that you're in. Forget about all that earthly stuff.

I was driving around yesterday listening to Hope FM. Y'all listen to Hope FM, right? I think it was KP O'Hanlon so he was talking about the spiritual world, the world unseen and the world that's seen. And how many people today would say the world that's seen is the most important thing. But he says what the Bible says, I wish I have to practice my cape. But the Bible says that everything that is seen came from what is unseen. What's unseen was here first. And everything that we see came from that. And what's unseen is what's more important, not what less important.

That's more important. If if you have to compare one to the other, what's what's true and real, people say that's real, you know, really. It's real stuff, solid wood, been there for a hundred years in the same place. That's real. But what's real, the Bible says is what you cannot see. What we see around us here, that's not that's only temporary, transitory, here for a period of time and then gone. Those verse 19, those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest and repent. Look, we all get mad when our parents discipline us when we were younger.

And they said, this is for your own good now. Why can't I have ice cream every night for dinner and also for lunch and even for breakfast? No, that's not good, son. That's not good, daughter. That You know, you have to eat the balanced diet of the very most important food groups. Well, I believe in the three important food groups, ice cream, cookies and well, whatever else. No, our parents discipline us because they love us. And the Lord does the same thing. Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. Something important here about the discipline of God.

If you're being disciplined of God, rebuked of God, if the Lord's working in your life, it's because he loves you. You don't want to be bummed out over that. You want to learn the lesson from it. It means he loves you and he wants the best for you. Remember, it's the very best athletes that get the hardest training. When that swimmer guy What's the guy that won eight or nine gold medals? Y'all know who I meant, Phelps. When they trained him, I bet his trainer was merciless at making him work harder and harder and harder.

So why? Because that's what you have to be to be a world class swimmer. The top students, they attend the best colleges. They take the hardest tests. You have to work harder to get something more valuable. The church father Jerome once said the greatest anger of God is when God withdraws his anger from us. We shouldn't regret or resent the chastening of God. It's because he loves us that he allows it. Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest and repent. Repent here. It's in the aorist imperative tense in the Greek. I know that's complicated.

Sounds like a Russian or sounds like a word from Mars or something. The aorist imperative tense, it it demands a definitive action. That's what that tense means in Greek. When it says repent, the answer to that it requires you to take a definitive action. Zealous here, when he says be earnest and repent, the word earnest or zealous, it's in the present imperative tense. It means continuous activity. So really repent should come before uh zealous. You have to take this definitive action and then engage in a continuous activity. You repent, you turn around, you walk to the Lord towards God and you engage in the continuous activity of being excited about him and your relationship with him and doing whatever it takes to go further with him.

In other words, you make your decision now for the rest of your life. You show forth your zeal. There is no zeal without a decision. And no decision is complete without the zeal that follows it. They kind of go together here, I think. Verse 20, read this once in a while at the end of church. Here I am. I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him and he with me. Look, Philadelphia might have been called the church of the open door.

Jesus said, I step before you an open door that no one can close. But if Philadelphia was the church of the open door, maybe we should call Laodicea the church of the closed door. But the Lord didn't close the door. They closed the door. The Lord is shut out of the church. How many churches are like that today? How many churches today? Life goes on. We go through the motions. We have services. We do all these things, but if the Lord wanted to get in there, he would need to send a bunch of commandos to jump on their roof or something.

Remember, he's given this message to the church. So it applied to the people in the church individually and as a whole. And there's a famous painting where it shows Jesus knocking on the door. And you can see there's no doorknob on the outside. The doorknob is on the inside. And that's an accurate representation of how it is. He doesn't force his way into your life. He doesn't bang down the door, kick it in. Doesn't do like they do in the cop shows, you know, PD open up. And then they have a guy with a big telephone pole, you know, they they push the door through and it always goes in the first time, you know.

He doesn't do that. He patiently waits for you to allow him into your life patiently. But there is a finite amount of time that you have to do that. And it's the time between your heartbeat and your pulse because you never know for sure if the next heartbeat is coming. He says, here I am. I stand at the door and knock.

Guest (Male): You've been listening to Hope from the Word. We're currently in a Through the Bible series. You can hear this message or more Hope from the Word with Pastor Bill Lubkeman by going to ccmarlton.org or wherever you find your podcasts. Pastor Bill's messages can also be found by downloading the Hope FM app on your smartphone or tablet. And finally, if you'd like a CD copy of the message, please call 856-983-1662. Again, that's 856-983-1662. We'd love to have you join us at Calvary Chapel of Marlton either in person or online. Our Sunday service begins at 10:00 a.m.

And there's a Wednesday evening service at 7:00. To catch us online, you can subscribe to our YouTube channel at Calvary Chapel of Marlton or just go to our website for the link at ccmarlton.org. And if you take a moment to write to Pastor Bill, it would be such a blessing to us. We're thankful each and every time we hear what God is doing in our listeners' lives, and we want to pray for you too. Either email us through the website at ccmarlton.org or call 856-983-1662.

Guest (Male): We'll continue our Through the Bible series next time on Hope from the Word with Pastor Bill Lubkeman, a presentation of Calvary Chapel of Marlton.