CaryCOG | Cary Church of God
Pastor Patrick Jensen brings us today's message: "A Church Moving Towards Fire"
Revelation 3:14-22 NKJV
I. The message to Laodicea is also a message to the church today
a. Many have speculated that the letters to the 7 churches that mark the beginning of Revelation consist of both letters specific to the church of its original intent with a separate meaning directed to church epochs or ages in history.
b. For example, Ephesus is often seen to represent the apostolic period of the church spanning AD 30-100.
c. Smyrna finds its counterpart in the age of the martyrs in the 2nd and 3rd centuries.
d. The church in Pergamum represents the age of the state church, which began with Constantine and continued until the first pope was recognized to have authority over the catholic church (AD 313-590)
e. Thyatira corresponds to the firmly established church of SD 590-1517 continuing until the Protestant Reformation
f. Sardis pictures the Reformation era of the church spanning 1517-1790.
g. Philadelphia represents the missionary church like William Carey (1730-1900)
h. Which brings us to Laodicea which portrays the apostate church of the last days (1900-present)
II. Self-Sufficiency and pride mitigate a church’s movement towards the fire (3:14-17)
a. Our text begins with a curious opening that is the case for all addressed to the 7 churches – an address to an angel. That is, there seems to be an assignment given to the angels to serve or watch over particular churches. So Christ himself, address this angel.
b. The appeal is made to the authority of the speaker as credential are elicited. Such credentials cannot be refuted – the speaker is a faithful and true witness, because as the gospels convey, the speaker only spoke with the Father gave Him. The speaker, namely Jesus Christ, is the beginning of creation, not that He himself was created, but that he was that witness and source of all creation. By Him, the worlds came into being!
c. The faithful and true witness knows all of our works. Beloved, Jesus sees the works of our hands and makes an assessment as the judge to cast verdict on the living and the dead.
d. What Christ then discusses is a gradient of zeal, fidelity and ardent love. He brings to us what is known today as a Likert scale. The terms are simple: hot or cold. And in between these states is a subtlety abhorrent place of being lukewarm.
e. You may ask Beloved, what are the precipitating factors to the dilemma being in between cold and hot? Christ, does not give a verdict only but both the causes and solution.
f. Let us take heed also of Matthew Henry’s extrapolation of this concept – true during his age and true during ours.
g. You may ask Beloved, why the despairing word. Is there hope for the Laodicean church? Is there hope for the church in the last days? Is there hope for us? We have seen what keeps us from moving towards fire - how we get stuck on the journey of zeal for our Lord. Now, let us look at the remedy for this condition. For there is hope for the last days, church. There is indeed glaring and outright hope for us!
Quote:
What a difference between their thoughts of themselves, and the thoughts Christ had of them! How careful should we be not to cheat our owns souls! There are many in hell, who once thought themselves far in the way to heaven. Let us beg of God that we may not be left to flatter and deceive ourselves.
Matthew Henry
III. A church moving towards fire accumulates heavenly wealth (3:18)
a. First, we must accumulate heavenly wealth as the text remarks in v. 18 when Christ pleads with us to buy of Him gold tried in the fire so that we would have true wealth. Now what does this mean? Let us look closely at this kind of wealth.
b. Second, gold tried in the fire appears to also be analogous to the oil in the lamp of the faithful virgins awaiting the groom in Matthew 25, for the wise virgins rebuked the foolish virgins asking them to purchase the priceless oil they had already obtained.
c. Finally, the gold refined by fire may also be a reference to Peter epistle.
d. Beloved, moving towards the fire is purchasing oil for your lamp, accumulating holy wealth is found in the following transactions:
1. Come to Christ
2. Listen to Christ
3. Look for Christ
4. Place your faith in Christ
e. This is the gold tried in the fire. This is the riches of heaven deposited in the banks of your hearts. There is nothing more valuable than a heart filled with the fire of God burning and yearning, living and learning, seeking, ravished with hunger, and desperate for His presence!
f. Notice, Beloved, the juxtaposition of this world’s wealth and divine wealth!
Quote:
Police can restrain a man from crime, but they cannot restrain him from sin, for sin is an affair of thought and impulse and nature. We can make a man pay his income tax, but we cannot make him generous, for generosity and charity are attitudes of the heart and only the man himself can attend to these. We can make a man polite, but we cannot endow him with grace, for grace goes deeper than good manners, and dwells in the secret places of the soul.
Ralph Sockman