Lukewarm Laodicean - Revelation 3:14-22

“I know you inside and out, and find little to my liking. You’re not cold, you’re not hot—far better to be either cold or hot! You’re stale. You’re stagnant. You make me want to vomit. You brag, ‘I’m rich, I’ve got it made, I need nothing from anyone,’ oblivious that in fact you’re a pitiful, blind beggar, threadbare and homeless.” (Revelation 3:15-17, The Message)

I have a friend who was for many years a doctor.  He became used to having to leave freshly made hot drinks in order to rush off and attend emergency calls elsewhere in the hospital.  As a result, he got used to drinking lukewarm tea.  But for most of us, lukewarm drinks are unpalatable.  Laodicea was a great and prosperous city on an important trade route.  Its wealthy inhabitants had a taste for the arts and had founded centres of learning there including a medical school.  The city had one infamous drawback: its water supply was provided from hot springs five miles away, which meant it was lukewarm by the time it got to the city, in contrast to the hot springs at nearby Hierapolis and the cold, pure waters of Colossae – both of which were more attractive and useful.  Laodicean water was hard to drink straight away as it was unpalatable – it needed either to cool down or be heated up to become an attractive, refreshing drink.
 
Unfortunately, that served as a decent metaphor for the state of the church.  Laodicean faith is the type of faith that no-one really wants, least of all, God.  It’s pathetic, passive and permissive.  It shrugs as it accepts mediocrity.  It has no hope or energy for change.  It carries a hint of an early promise that’s been forgotten.  There’s no lively passion and no meaningful compassion.  Laodicean churches talk the talk but do not walk the walk.  Perhaps they were once full of compassion, mercy, mutual service and encouragement, possessing a radical faith that fuelled true kingdom action…  But over time Laodicean churches wear down and let unbelief, lowered expectations, negative attitudes, compromised behaviours and a closed-community mindset take hold.  Ironically, this kind of failure can often coincide with a terrible curse of spiritual blindness where we actually imagine ourselves superior in some way to others. 

Are we really so distant from the spiritual disease that had gripped the church in Laodicea?  There but by the grace of LOVE go we…in fear and trembling we commit to one another that we must not fall in to this trap.

Having diagnosed the illness, LOVE prescribes the medicine and urges Laodicean churches to take it: “Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest and repent.  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 that person, and they with me” (Revelation 3:19-20).  This is something we all need to do.  It’s not a one-off thing either, those in the church in Laodicea had already converted and decided to follow Jesus previously.  But they’d fallen in to error and now they had to put it right, repenting and asking Jesus again to enter their hearts.  This is something that many of us will need to do many times.  We can be encouraged that these words contain a solid promise from LOVE: “If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in”.
 
Remarkably, LOVE’s message to the Laodicean church ends with further motivation: “To the one who is victorious, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I was victorious and sat down with my Father on his throne” (Revelation 3:21).  That really is an amazing offer!  And it’s available to you and I.  LOVE’s objective for the Laodicean church is clear: LOVE wants it back in a full, unfettered relationship whereby it might know again the heights to which it is called.
 
As we pray today, let’s be brave and ask LOVE for a health-check.  Where have we become Laodicean?  Let’s respond to LOVE’s invitation to return to him and obtain the righteousness we so desperately need and the provision and healing that only LOVE can give us.  Let’s pray for the church in Bournemouth that we might not become lukewarm in our worship, prayer, fellowship or mission.  Where we have already become so, let’s repent and open the door to Jesus, inviting LOVE in once again to renew us – confident that he will respond positively if only we’ll ask and really mean it.

 “Are your ears awake? Listen. Listen to the Wind Words, the Spirit blowing through the churches.” (Revelation 3:22, The Message)