Following is the last sermon that Pastor Alan Meenan delivered from the pulpit shortly before the People who believe in homosexual ordination, pray to Allah to receive insight in the "truth" of the teachings of Mohammed have seized control of the First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood. Please pray that this leadership will be restored to the pulpit in that church.
Agape <><
Mark Rouleau
rouleau-law@afo.net
Sunday, April 3, 2005
Hollywood Pulpit
Dr. Alan J. Meenan
“Called to Passion”
Revelation 3:14-22
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Let me tell you a little bit about the church in Laodicea. Laodicea itself is about 100 miles east of Ephesus, a beautiful main Roman road that led to the Lycus Valley, good sheep
grazing country. It was famous for its wool; black wool in particular. This black wool was famed; a luxury item in those days. This was a
center of trade and finance, famous not only for its sheep grazing but also for its great banking
system. It was also famous for a prominent medical school. In fact, in Laodicea they had
developed a particular ointment that would cure eye defects. It was known as Phrygian powder
and apparently actually worked. It was a wealthy place. Even the runes you can see
today are magnificent there. But yet for all its wealth, it had a very poor water supply, coming
six miles from the south along stone pipes. It brought the water to Laodicea at a tepid
temperature, neither hot nor cold. As we look at the condition of the church in Laodicea, and
we are now doing the last of the seven churches, we see that Jesus Christ has nothing
good to say about this one church. But hopefully the Gospel has something to say here
and will bring the Good News, even into such a situation as Laodicea.
Laodicea is a lesson on how the church needs to function in an affluent society. In verses
fifteen and sixteen, you will discover that they are described as being lukewarm, just like their
water supply. Jesus is saying, just the way the water reaches Laodicea, it is neither hot nor
cold, so your faith is neither hot nor cold. It lacks real commitment; it lacks real zeal; it has
become complacent and self-sufficient; it seeks easy accommodation; it is indifferent to the real
issues of discipleship, what it truly means to be a follower of Jesus Christ. Somehow they set it
aside. They had not become engrossed in what it meant to be zealous for God, and they let it
compromise their faith. So the church in Laodicea was a church that tolerated everything
and hated nothing. The people in Laodicea were all good people, respectable and
peaceable members of the community. They were doctors and bankers and farmers and
shepherds, but they had become content with their lot, with they material prosperity and their
social acceptance. They had become bland religionists, believing in conformity at any
price. They didn’t want to stand out as being different. They didn’t want to be considered
fanatics. They didn’t want to be thought of as zealots for their faith. And so, as a result, they
kind of went underground a little bit, so that they were no different from anyone else. They
went along with the crowd, lived like everybody else, acted like everybody else, did
the same things as everybody else, and had become somewhat indifferent to the Gospel.
Once a church becomes indifferent, then that church ceases to have any relevance in the world.
Now, what is Christ’s verdict on this church?
It is rather astonishing. Jesus Christ cannot stand the church in Laodicea. He says, in
effect, you make me sick, so sick that you make me want to vomit. I don’t get language like
that anywhere else in the Bible, do you? That Jesus Christ would feel that passionately about
it. He says to them that it would have been better never to have begun the journey with
Christ than to come to this. Better never to have given your life to Christ than become the
kind of Christian who’s neither hot nor cold, whom Jesus Christ would spew out of His
mouth. The kind of conventional, meaningless Christianity that marks so many churches in
this land and the world. And if verse sixteen isn’t enough, it gets even worse in verse seventeen. In verse seventeen, it
appears that not only are they mediocre, not only are they lukewarm, they don’t even know
that they are lukewarm, and that is the greatest tragedy of all. There is a sense that they are
secure in their own affluence, unaware, says Jesus, “…that you wretched, pitiful, poor, blind
and naked.” Who is more to be pitied than someone who imagines themself to be a fine
Christian, who, in reality, is the subject of Christ’s disgust? Christians, satisfied with their
own spiritual condition, who believe themselves to be good enough, who are
satisfied with their spiritual attainments, and this greater tragedy than indifference itself, is
to be fully unaware of ones own poverty. So, one might say that Laodicea was a place that
was no more prosperous a city than Laodicea, and there was no more poverty-ridden community than Laodicea.
In contrast to the faithlessness of the Laodiceans, you have the trustworthiness of Jesus Christ, and now the whole story takes on a new dimension. The Laodiceans may have surrendered the high ground, but Jesus Christ, we read in verse fourteen, is still the Amen, still the faithful and true, still the ruler of God’s creation. So we move from the condition of the church to the claims and counsel of Christ. These claims of Christ that we find in verse fourteen are three-fold. First of all, He is the Amen. And we know that amen means “so be it; let this be true!” In fact, the word is also used at the beginning of some of Christ’s statements where we read, “Amen, amen, I say to you.” In other words, these things are true. So Jesus Christ is the true one; He is valid and He is binding; this is truth beyond all shadow of doubt. Then, to force home that concept, He says He is “the faithful and true witness.” I believe that basically says the same thing to the non-Hebrew mind, that this is a Person one can rely on. He is the ruler of the creation of the world. He is the only one who has absolute power over all things. It is only the God who creates, who can re-create. And the new birth is a re-creation, brought about by the Person who processed creation. The God who creates is the God who re-creates. And if Jesus Christ claims to be God the creator, which He does in this verse, then He is the only one who is able to go down into the depths of where Laodicea is, down into the depths of where you and I occasionally find ourselves, and bring recreation and hope and redemption back into our lives and into our churches.
In verse eighteen you have the counsel of Christ. He could command but He doesn’t. He counsels; He shatters their illusions. He tells them they are in great need, and that not all the banks, not all the pharmacies, not all the looms in Laodicea can meet their need because they are poor, though they seem to be rich. He said to the church at Smyrna, “I know that you are poor, but in fact, you are rich.” To the church in Laodicea He says, “I know that you are rich in material things but you are poor in faith.” What He now goes on to do is offer redemption and hope for the church in Laodicea. He’s offering to change their poverty into untold riches. He’s offering to clothe their nakedness, and He’s offering to cure their blindness. So He says to them in verse eighteen, “I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see.” Now remember again what Laodicea was famous for. It was famous for its banks; it was famous for its clothing; and it was famous for its medical institution. And Jesus says to them, “Even though you have all those banks, buy gold from Me, for that gold will enrich your faith.” That gold, Peter tells us, is genuine faith. Because ultimately, you and I know that money can’t buy love. Money can’t buy happiness; money can’t by comfort in your sorrow; it can’t buy you fellowship in your loneliness. There are things that money cannot buy, and Jesus says to such a one, “Buy gold from Me.”
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When I think about that gold, I may be pushing the envelope here, and I declare I might be. In Psalm 119, David likened gold, the purest gold, to the Word of God. He said, “I love your commands more than gold, more than pure gold.” In the same chapter he also said, “How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth.” So I wonder, could Jesus be calling the church of Laodicea back to the Word of God? Could He be saying that in this Word of God, you will find riches untold? Could it be that He is saying that Christians who are saturated in the Word, who know it, who have become familiar with it and who obey it, are the richest Christians in all the world? “Buy gold from Me.” He says. “And buy clothing to cover your nakedness.” They had all the clothes they needed in Laodicea. This black wool was a luxury item in the ancient world. But Jesus says, “No, you want to buy white linen. You want to buy this white clothing from Me.” Revelation nineteen goes on to say that that white clothing is the clothing of the righteous one, and it is the character of God’s grace because nakedness in the Bible connotes the idea of judgment and humiliation. When a king conquered another king, often the conquered army would have to strip naked and walk through the streets as a sign of humiliation. On the other hand, to be given clothes was to bestow great honor on someone. Pharaoh bestowed that honor on Joseph. Jacob did it long before Pharaoh did. Belshazzar robed Daniel in the most gorgeous clothes as a sign of honor. And when the Prodigal finally decided to come back home, his father said, “Kill the fatted calf and put the finest robe upon him.” And Jesus says to the church in Laodicea as He does to us today, “Buy clothing from Me that you will be adorned with righteousness.” And then He also says, “Buy salve that you can see.”
You see, the problem of the church in Laodicea, the problem of so many people today, is that we’ve become spiritually blind to our real condition. We don’t have other people holding our feet to the fire, making us accountable. And we’ve become spiritually blind. Jesus said, “Buy salve from Me so that you will be able to see more clearly. That you will begin to understand what it really means to be a follower of Jesus Christ.” Interestingly, all three of these, the gold, the clothes, and the salve, point to the need for authentic salvation. If you are to be redeemed in Jesus Christ, if you are to be born again, if you are to be saved, then you need what He offers: the gold of the Word, the clothing of righteousness, and the salve to see, so that you can follow closely. While this is the most stern of all the seven letters, we move now to the most tender part of all seven letters. In verses twenty and twentyone, here is the chance to change. That’s the very nature and essence of the Gospel, isn’t it? God does not simply wash His hands of the church in Laodicea, as Pilate washed his hands of Jesus Christ. He looks at this rather apostate church, He looks at this rather mediocre church, and He says to this church, “I love you and I’m not going to give up on you. No matter what, I’m going to hold you fast to Myself.” He says in verse nineteen, “Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline.” He loves those whom He disciplines most. Watching over us always in love, never content with what we are content, but always challenging us to higher ground, to deeper commitment, to more fervent love for Jesus Christ and the Gospel and a world in need. Never giving up on us, but always loving us on. In Proverbs, chapter three, we read these words: “My son, do not do not despise the LORD’s discipline and do not resent His rebuke, because the LORD disciplines those He loves, as a father the son he delights in.” In Hebrews twelve we read, “…because the Lord disciplines those He loves, and He punishes everyone He accepts as a son.” The purpose is always to win you back. When we wander astray, it is God’s purpose to win us back, and that is brought out even more in the next verse. But before we get there, let me say that in verse nineteen you have, first of all, a call to repent. And secondly, you have a call to be earnest, fervent. The call to repent, in the Greek, is a one-time thing. It means, “turn around and go in the opposite direction that you are going.” And “be earnest” is a continuous verb in the Greek that means “keep on keeping on being zealous. Zealousness is the opposite of lukewarmness. The person who is zealous for Christ will never be lukewarm. So Jesus is saying, “Turn around from the lukewarmness and embrace with zeal my love for you and your love for the world.” Verse twenty is one of the best-known verses in all the Scripture. It is the picture of Christ actually going out in quest of sinful man who does not want Him or is not seeking Him. “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.” Is there a more beautiful invitation in all the Bible than all that? “[Behold], I stand at the door and knock.” The interesting thing for me is this was a church in Laodicea that had actually excommunicated Christ. They had barred Him from the church by their lackluster commitment. And Jesus, being excommunicated, asks permission of the church to re-enter. The pleading Savior; there is no picture like it in any other religion. Jesus Christ, standing outside the door of the church, knocking and asking to get in. The imagery comes from that lovely little book in the Old Testament, the Song of Solomon. You know the story where the bridegroom comes knocking at the door of the bride, and says in intimate terms, “Open to me, my sister, my darling, my dove, my flawless one. My head is drenched with dew, my hair with the dampness of the night.” I would imagine that if any groom came knocking on the door of a bride, saying those lovely things, she would open the door right away. But in reality, she says, “I have taken off my robe – must I put it on again? I have washed my feet – must I soil them again? My lover thrust his hand through the latch-opening; my heart began to pound for him.” But by the time she got to the door, he was gone. “[Behold], I stand at the door and knock.” So, the question you see, as we read the old story, is will the bride open the door for the groom. And, you know that the analogy in the New Testament is that Jesus Christ is the groom and we, the church, are the bride. The bridegroom says, “I am knocking at the door.” And the church will respond one way or another. How will you respond? One of the marvelous things here is that there is no coercion at all on the part of Jesus Christ, even when He sees a church like Laodicea. Jesus Christ is not going to force His way into your life. He is not going to force His way into the church of Laodicea. He’s knocking and He is waiting, because that door can only be opened from within. Here’s my final point. A lover rebukes, a lover appeals, and a lover rewards in verse twentyone of Revelation, chapter three. To the man or woman who leaves the lukewarmness, who turns away from self-sufficiency, who buys the gold and the clothing of righteousness and the salve in order to see, Jesus says that that one will rise to the very throne of heaven. “Let him who has an ear to hear…” So what shall we hear? Like the old friar in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet who says, “Love, love, love moderately.” Or compelled by a passionate desire, whereby everything else fades into insignificance and we embrace the risen Christ and pledge to Him our full, complete, and final love. “Let him who has an ear to hear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”