Text: Revelation 3:14-22

My purpose for this message: Watch out that your wealth does not draw you away from God, and neuter the church’s power. 

Delivered: July 11, 2010

When God Gets Sick

 

PRAY.

Day in and day out in North Korea, Kim Jong-il’s propaganda machine tells its citizens: you are happiest people on earth, and you have nothing to envy in the outside world.  Yet 1/3 of North Koreans are starving, and half its factories lie idle because of power shortages.

Some North Koreans who’ve defected read George Orwell’s 60 year-old book Nineteen Eighty-Four about a world controlled by “The Party”.  By propaganda –and more extreme measures, The Party duped people into believing lies about themselves—and the Party. 

The North Koreans asked, “How did Orwell, know our country so well?” 

In a May interview with the BBC, North Korea economic adviser Ri Ki-song gushed, “Our country has reached new heights of economic achievement thanks to the strength and self-reliance of the North Korean people and to our plentiful natural resources.”  It was about that time that the lights went out—a common occurrence in Pyongyang.

Ri never missed a beat.  “And what’s more, we are meeting all of our people’s needs.”  It would be even funnier…, if only I could forget how easy it is to fool me about myself.

READ Revelation 3:14-22.

 

1.       The city

In the first century when Rome ruled the world, a cluster of three towns lay in the Lycus River Valley in what is today Turkey.  The center town was Laodicea.  From there, walk 6 miles north and you’d come to Hieropolis—Colossians 4:13 tells us there was a church there, or walk east 11 miles to Colossae, and of course there was a church there too. 

Laodicea was a wealthy city thanks to the 2 major trade routes which intersected there.  It was a trading and banking powerhouse like Hong Kong or New York City.  But not economically dependent just on banking.  Over the centuries, breeders had developed a sheep with a highly coveted black wool.  From it they manufactured and exported carpets and fine clothing.  They were even on the map medically.  A local medical school developed a famous eye salve using a material from the region known as Phrygian Powder.  So famous even Aristotle wrote about it.

Here’s how rich they were: when an earthquake flattened the city about 35 years before this letter, Emperor Nero offered Roman aid but they turned him down, “No thanks, we’ll rebuild ourselves.”  And they did.

For all they had going for themselves, they had one major liability.  As American pioneers pushed against the frontier in the 18^th and 19 centuries, settlements sprang up where there was water.  Not just for transportation but survival.  Laodicea sprang up where it did because of commerce.  The road system was good for that but the town’s founding fathers should have thought about survival.  They didn’t have a good water supply. 

They built a stone aqueduct to pipe in water from Denizli 6 miles away.  Problem was, by the time it arrived in Laodicea, the distance, heat, and sediment had changed it from cool refreshment to a lukewarm and foul tasting liquid. 

Cold water at Denizli, and hot springs of Hieropolis.  These flowed out of the city across a broad plateau before tumbling over a cliff in a waterfall.  The many minerals common to hot springs and which many people still believe have medicinal properties, crusted on the edge of a cliff in plain view of Laodicea’s resident.

 

2.      The Church

READ Colossians 2:1.  The apostle Paul didn’t visit this church even though he had a pastoral concern.  READ Colossians 4:12-13.  Likely Epaphras was the planter.  Paul did write Laodicea a letter.  READ Colossians 4:16.  What happened to the letter is anybody’s guess but God did not want it included in the Bible.

But Jesus’ letter to Laodicea, He did.  The church people were just like their neighbors in the city: affluent and independent.  If an American team assessing a church saw those qualities, it might be positive.  Not to the “AMEN” (v.14).  (Heb. “AMEN” means “it is true”.)   He is the faithful and true witness who does not sugarcoat things like I might try to do: you make me sick.

I borrowed my sermon title “When God Gets Sick” from Leonard Ravenhill, a great Scottish revivalist and evangelist of the 20^th century.  A church that is not hot, is not cold, is liable to make Jesus spit.  Not the kind you do at a rodeo or out the window while you’re driving (at least guys do!), but the kind you do when you have the flu, or eat bad shellfish: spit up.  Young’s literal translation of v.16: I am about to vomit thee out of my mouth.  Let’s try to figure out what was the problem:

·         I know your deeds

o        They were lukewarm instead of hot or cold

o        Because they were financially well off they imagined themselves in need of nothing (clearly, no prayer)

o        Yet in fact, you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked (spiritual diagnosis)

o        They needed to repent (whatever it is, is sin)

o        Since there was a door between Jesus and them, they obviously did not have fellowship with Him (went to church but no other ongoing evidence of a relationship)

This was way more than a problem of apathy.  To us, lukewarmness is not being on fire for Jesus, and being cold is being against the Lord.  But Jesus’ frame of reference here was not American clichés, it was Laodicean realities.  Here, everyone knew the value of good water: the healing hot springs of Hieropolis, the refreshing cold springs of Denizli.  Both are useful; spiritually, both the cold water Christian and the hot water Christian can faithfully serve God.

But not the lukewarm, revolting, cloudy Laodicean church.  Were these church members Christians?  A few commentators say “no” but most say “yes”.  (On the one hand, Jesus vomiting someone sounds like they’re lost (16), but then again His claim that He rebukes and disciplines those He loves (19), sounds like family.

My own conclusion is that Jesus was deliberately vague about this.  It’s likely some were, some weren’t, but they looked so much alike who could tell which was which?  With no sense of need, there was no prayer.  With a door between them and Christ, there was no fellowship with Him through Bible reading (except what was overheard on Sunday worship), ministry of any kind, and certainly no real worship.  With no needs themselves, it’s doubtful they recognized any in others.  Spiritually, that meant no helping others grow in Christ; physically that meant no helping others with needs like food, clothing, etc. 

Their financial independence seems to have been what shipwrecked faith but they didn’t see it.  You do not realize you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.  Wow, you talk about fooling yourself! 

Of all these letters to the seven churches, can you think of another one that could speak more pointedly to American Christians?  “We are rich and have need of nothing.”  What American does not want financial independence?  But wealth has this tendency to checkmate faith.  I don’t have to ask God to provide.  “Give us this day our daily bread.”  Between the fridge, the pantry and the freezer, I’m good for several months.  And if it runs out, I have money to buy more.

“Even the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”  I do.  I can rent an apartment, or buy a house.  I understand this is not true for everyone but this is stereotypical for most American Christians: that not only do I have money for the essentials, I’ve got money for vacations, money for dining out, money for televisions and computers and cameras and a bigger wardrobe than many in the world can conceive of.  Money’s not evil, but it is dangerous.  It can become the means by which pride displaces worship.  READ Deuteronomy 8:17-18. 

Our money and stuff is not evil if we recognize that what we have, a very generous God gave to a very undeserving sinner.  It’s not evil if we use it not only for ourselves and our comfort but for His glory, for His people, for those in need, and for the advance of His kingdom.  It is evil if we forget where it comes from, if we use it exclusively to indulge ourselves and devote much of our week’s hours to buying and luxuriating in our stuff.  We work harder and harder, work more and more hours to buy more and more stuff with which we spend more and more time; is it a wonder that though big and influential, the American church is a paper tiger, all show and no go; powerless? 

Logically, it does not seem that wealth and its enjoyment should lead to watered down faith and a watered down church.  It doesn’t necessarily, but it easily does.  Jesus describes it as the “deceitfulness of wealth” (Matthew 13:22).  Paul warns against the tendency to “put our hope in wealth” (1 Timothy 6:17).  James denounces rich people who live in luxury and self-indulgence while failing to pay their employees proper wages.  And at the end of it all their fine clothes are moth-eaten, their money has corroded and the rest has rotted (James 5:1-6).

Powerless Christians who have been neutralized by their money and stuff, make a powerless church.  Are we willing to accept that as normal?  To dabble pay a little lip service to Christ who knows the door to Him is actually shut?  Are you deluded?  Should the “AMEN” take the blinders off, would you be forced to admit, “Oh, God, I’m wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.”  With many material things or riches, you may be are nothing more than a spiritual street urchin, much like the unclaimed children roaming San Paolo’s streets.  You have much this world offers, and nothing of the next.

READ Revelation 18:7-19.  Brothers and sisters, we must see ourselves in this lest we delude ourselves.  We may not have ties to satanic Babylon but luxury marks us.  Rich Christians are not immune to the sad creep of self-delusion that marked this church.  Perhaps an economic recession is really God’s wakeup call.  We buy, buy, buy, but brothers and sisters, are we buying what really matters?  READ Revelation 3:18. 

 

Concl:

In Acts 3, Peter was walking into the temple courts when a beggar crippled from birth asked for alms.  Peter looked at him and said, Silver and gold I do not have, but what I have I give you.  In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk (Acts 3:6).  And he did.

800 years ago, the legend is that Thomas Aquinas—the greatest Catholic scholar, met with Pope Innocent IV.  Not only was Aquinas brilliant but he had a tender heart towards God—especially late in life.  Although he had come from a family of note and wealth, he was a simple man with simple tastes. 

Medieval popes were obscenely wealthy and showing Aquinas the vast treasury of the Vatican the Pope said, “Peter can no longer say, ‘Silver and gold I do not have.’”  (To Catholics, popes continue the line of apostolic authority that supposedly began with Peter.)

With some sadness, Aquinas responded, “No, and neither can you say, ‘Rise up and walk.”