Revelation: The Church at Laodicea: “The Lukewarm Church”

Remember the story of Sodom and Gomorrah? Moses nephew Lot and his family are living there and God tells Lot he is going to destroy the city of Sodom. Lot bargains with God to try and save the city by trying to find some ‘good’ people in the city. We tend to think this word ‘good’ refers to the morality of the people in that city - because it was a very immoral city. So how many of you think that the reason the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed was because of their immorality? Let’s read why God says these cities were destroyed with hail fire and brimstone. Here’s what God says in the book of Ezekiel about why he chose to level these cities: ‘Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned;”. God does away with these cities not because of their immorality but because they were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned - it was apathy towards the things of God and the people of God that destroyed these cities - and that brings us to city #7 - the church at Laodicea.
Read Revelation 3:14-22.
Laodicea is the last one Jesus addresses - and I’ve often wondered why Jesus chose to address this city last. I would have thought Jesus wold have wanted to end these letters to the churches of Asia Minor with a more positive message. Instead Jesus leaves us with this message of complete failure on the part of the church in Laodicea. Jesus is so disgusted with this city of Laodicea that he has absolutely nothing good to say about it - he is so upset that he says to this congregation that he wants to ‘spit them out of his mouth’ - actually that is the nice translation - the actual Greek says, “I want to vomit you out of me”. Jesus is not happy.
Laodicea was located in what is modern day Turkey. It occupied a plateau several hundred feet up in the mountains. It was a prosperous center of banking and commerce. It was famous for clothing made from the wool of black sheep which made a very fine, soft, sought after material and for a popular eye salve produced by its medical school. The wealth in the city had been used to build theaters, a huge sports stadium, lavish public baths and a fabulous shopping center. It was a great place to live: the land of opportunity. You had a good life and plenty of fun and entertaining things to do.
There was pagan worship there - a temple for the worship of the Roman Empire. Their ‘god’ was the city of Rome and they worshipped the leadership and just the idea of the power of Rome. A large Jewish community lived in Laodicea and they exhibited part of the problem that was wrong with the Christian church - they had watered down their practice of Judaism by integrating into the Greek culture. For example, there are documents found from this city where the Jews had rewritten the story of Noah and the flood to incorporate the Roman myths about this flood.
In sprite of its prosperity, the city had a major strategic weakness - the lack of an adequate and convenient water source. Water had to be piped in using an aqueduct from springs 6 miles away. An enemy could easily cut off the water supply, leaving the city helpless. What made this water problem even more ironic, was the fact that If you’d gone a little way north toward Hierapolis you could have bathed in the hot springs as people still do today. If you’d gone south you’d have come to the mountain springs with their cool refreshing water. If you’d gone east to Colossae you would have found cold pure water to refresh you. But in Laodicea they were dependent on the aqueduct, a pipeline that ran above ground for several miles and by which time the water reached Laodicea it had warmed up to an unsatisfying, lukewarm state. So the city may have been very prosperous and a great place to live, but the water was nasty! Remember, this is before the days of refrigeration or bottled spring water!
So Jesus says to the church in Laodicea, you are just like your water - Lukewarm. Hot water is good for drinking hot tea or bathing, Cold water is refreshing and great to drink on a hot day but lukewarm water has no real purpose. It is not good for anything. So Jesus says, hot is good, cold is good, but lukewarm is not worth

anything. He says to the church, “You guys are lukewarm. How I wish you were hot or cold. Because hot or cold you would be useful, but the way you are now is worth nothing.” The heart of the problem at Laodicea was that they just didn’t care. Jesus just wasn’t that important to them, there were too many other things that they had to think about, too many other things going on in their lives. They did what they needed to do for the church. They participated when it didn’t interfere with something else but their hearts and minds were far from the commitment Jesus demands of us. Remember ‘love the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind and strength’? That means, total, every day, every thing we do, commitment to Christ and that just wasn’t part of the Laodicean church.
Most of you have probably seen the picture of Jesus standing outside a door knocking. Looks like he is in a garden. The big deal about this picture was the fact that if you look at the door there is no door handle. It has often been said that this picture is to represent Jesus asking non believers to invite him into their heart. That is not at all what the picture is about. A little history - it was painted in 1853 by William Holman Hunt and is titled “Jesus the Light of the World” because in the original painting Jesus is carrying a lantern as he knocks on the door. Hunt wanted people to see the overgrown garden around the door as if it had been a very long time since the garden was tended or the door was opened. He painted it specifically to represent this passage from Revelation referring to the church of Laodicea.
Hunt knew the true meaning of the words of Jesus to the church of Laodicea “I stand outside the door and knock” was not referring to people accepting Jesus and becoming a part of the church - but was referring to the church itself. Remember, this letter to the church of Laodicea was written to people who were already members of this church; they had already ‘accepted’ Jesus. They were baptized, participating members of that church. What Hunt - and Jesus - is trying to help us see is that this church was chugging along without Jesus. So what does that mean? That really doesn’t make any sense. By definition isn’t Jesus always part of the church?
Not necessarily. This church is doing church stuff. But Jesus is far from their thoughts and minds as they do this ‘church stuff’. So Jesus tells them first that they are so despicable that he is going to spit them out of his mouth. Reminds me a little of how I feel some mornings when I am working at my desk with my cup of coffee. I pour the coffee and it is nice and steaming hot as I go to the desk and I take a few sips and it is really good……. but then I get busy working and working and working and I reach over and take a sip of the coffee and it is now lukewarm and there is nothing yuckier tasting than a lukewarm cup of coffee and I get them screwed up look on my face when you taste something nasty and what I would really like to do is spit out that coffee - fortunately I resist that impulse. Jesus says the church is like that sip of bitter coffee because the church does not have the love of Jesus in their hearts and minds as they participate in the work of the church.
The greatest insight into their failure is v20: "20Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me." Far from being a harsh letter, you see, this is actually a love letter, offering a restoring of the relationship that they’ve let slip. You see we get so caught up in doing ‘church stuff’ that we think we are more than capable to do what needs to be done. We’ve cooked and we’ve worshiped and we have done our fund raisers and we have conducted our meetings and we’ve had activities and we have managed to get it all done and it has done well. And ‘we’ have done it and the more ‘we have done it’ the less participation we allow Jesus because we think ‘we have done it’ and we really don’t need him. The apathy of the Laodicean church was not a ho hum about the church, it was a ho hum about Jesus. We get busy doing church stuff and we forget that we are here to work side by side with Jesus and that Jesus wants to be a conscious part of that work.
But Jesus wants to restore the relationship with us and with HIS church. And he isn’t going to wait around any longer for an invitation. He’s knocking on the door waiting for the Laodiceans to open the door and invite him in. Now in that culture when someone knocks on the door there’s an imperative to show hospitality. So this carries both an offer of intimacy but also a hint of demand. Jesus is insisting that they pay attention to him, that they give up their self reliance and turn back to the relationship that they should have with him.
And in turn he promises that if they’ll repent and turn back to him, he’ll remain with them and help them and guide them and lead them into truly living with Christ in spirit and truth.
So what does this mean for us?
It means we need to stop and evaluate. We need to think about our personal commitment to Jesus Christ and who or what are we living our life for?
And then we need to think collectively about our church. What is our commitment to? Is it to the church itself - or are we open to thinking about how we involve Jesus in our decisions and then are we willing to follow through with how we hear Jesus challenging us to stay focused on the work he challenges the church to do?
Are we willing, every one of us, to be involved and interested and willing to take up the responsibilities of doing Jesus’ work through the church?
Like Sodom, like Laodicea, we don’t want to be accused of being unconcerned. It is not someone else’ responsibility to keep the church active, it is yours. Each of you working together, sharing the duties, involved and caring and really invested in this church.

Amen.