The vision and experience of christ in his resurrection and ascension
Message Eight
The Church in Laodicea
Scripture Reading: Rev. 3:14-22
I. In Greek Laodicea means "opinion, judgment, of the people" or "of the laymen"—Rev. 3:14:
A. Once Philadelphia fails, she becomes Laodicea; the only warning for the church in Philadelphia is for them to hold fast what they have that no one take their crown:
1. They should not be weary of doing the same things for a long time and should not ask for a change; they should not contemplate doing something new after all the years of doing the same things—keeping the Lord's word and not denying His name—vv. 8, 11.
2. What they have done is right and is blessed by the Lord; therefore, they should continue in it; they have to hold fast what they have and not let it go!
B. Laodicea is a distorted Philadelphia; when brotherly love is gone, the opinion of the majority is the accepted opinion; as long as the majority is in favor, it is all right:
1. When brotherly love is lost, the Body relationship and consciousness are lost.
2. The fellowship of life is cut off as well, leaving only the opinions of men.
II. "I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot; I wish that you were cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm and neither hot nor cold, I am about to spew you out of My mouth. Because you say, I am wealthy and have become rich and have need of nothing, and do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked"—vv. 15-17:
A. In the eyes of the Lord, the characteristics of Laodicea are lukewarmness and spiritual pride:
1. Spiritual pride comes from history; some were once rich, and they think that they are still rich; they still remember their history, but they have lost their former life.
2. The Lord was once merciful to them, and they remember their history, but now they have lost that reality.
3. They remember that they were once wealthy and had become rich and had need of nothing, but now they are poor and blind.
B. If we want to continue in the way of Philadelphia and avoid becoming Laodicea, we have to remember to humble ourselves before God—Matt. 5:3; 19:23-24; Isa. 57:15:
1. "Love does not brag and is not puffed up…Love never falls away"—1 Cor. 13:4b, 8a.
2. We should bear in mind that we have nothing we have not received—4:7; cf. 2:12; John 3:27; 1 Pet. 4:10.
3. Those who live before the Lord will not be conscious of their own riches.
C. Laodicea means to know everything but, in reality, to be fervent about nothing; in name it has everything, but it cannot sacrifice its life for anything; it remembers its former glory but forgets its present condition before God; formerly, it was Philadelphia, but today it is Laodicea.
D. When a person becomes proud, forsakes the way of life, and neglects reality, while reminiscing on his history and his own riches, the only thing left will be the opinions of many:
1. Among such ones there can only be discussion and consensus; it appears to be a democratic society but bears no resemblance to the Body relationship.
2. If you do not know the binding, authority, and life of the Body, you do not know brotherly love.
E. Those who follow the Lord have no pride; the Lord will spew the proud ones out of His mouth:
1. May the Lord be merciful to us; this is a warning to all of us: we must not be proud in our speaking.
2. A person must live before the Lord continually before he can refrain from proud words; only those who live before God continually will not consider themselves rich; only they will not be proud.
F. To be hot for the Lord and the church is to be boiling; to be spewed out of the Lord's mouth by being lukewarm is to be rejected by the Lord and to lose the enjoyment of all that the Lord is to the church.
G. In the eyes of the Lord the degraded recovered church has the following five characteristics:
1. She is wretched because she is proud of being rich in the vain knowledge of doctrine, but in reality she is sorely poor in the experience of the riches of Christ.
2. She is miserable because she is naked, blind, and full of shame and darkness.
3. She is poor because she is poor in the experience of Christ and in the spiritual reality of God's economy.
4. She is blind because she lacks the true spiritual insight in the genuine spiritual things.
5. She is naked because she does not live by Christ or live Christ as her subjective righteousness, as the second garment in her daily walk—Psa. 45:1-2, 9, 13-14; Matt. 22:11-12; Phil. 3:8-9; Rev. 19:8.
III. "I counsel you to buy from Me gold refined by fire that you may be rich, and white garments that you may be clothed and that the shame of your nakedness may not be manifested, and eyesalve to anoint your eyes that you may see. As many as I love I reprove and discipline; be zealous therefore and repent"—3:18-19:
A. In the Bible our operating, working faith (Gal. 5:6) is likened to gold (1 Pet. 1:7), and the divine nature of God, which is the divinity of Christ, is typified by gold (Exo. 25:11); by faith we partake of the divine nature of God (2 Pet. 1:1, 4-5):
1. The degraded recovered church has the knowledge of the doctrines concerning Christ but not much living faith to partake of the divine element of Christ.
2. She needs to pay the price to gain the golden faith through the fiery trials that she may participate in the real gold, which is Christ Himself as the life element to His Body.
3. Thus, she can become a pure golden lampstand (Rev. 1:20) for the building of the golden New Jerusalem (21:18).
B. White garments signify conduct that can be approved by the Lord; such conduct is the Lord Himself lived out of the church, and it is required by the degraded recovered church for the covering of her nakedness.
C. The eyesalve needed to anoint their eyes must be the anointing Spirit (1 John 2:27), who is the Lord Himself as the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b); the degraded recovered church needs this kind of eyesalve for the healing of her blindness (cf. Job 42:5-6):
1. In the New Testament sense, seeing God equals gaining God; to gain God is to receive God in His element, in His life, and in His nature that we may be constituted with God—cf. Matt. 5:8.
2. Seeing God transforms us (2 Cor. 3:16, 18; cf. 1 John 3:2), because in seeing God we receive His element into us, and our old element is discharged; this metabolic process is transformation (Rom. 12:2).
3. To see God is to be transformed into the glorious image of Christ, the God-man, that we may express God in His life and represent Him in His authority.
4. The more we see God, know God, and love God, the more we abhor ourselves and the more we deny ourselves—Job 42:5-6; Matt. 16:24; Luke 9:23; 14:26.
D. Dead, vain knowledge and doctrinal forms have made the degraded recovered church lukewarm; she needs to repent of her lukewarmness and be zealous, boiling, burning, that thereby she may regain the enjoyment of the reality of Christ.
IV. "Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, then I will come in to him and dine with him and he with Me"—Rev. 3:20:
A. The door is not the door of the hearts of individuals but the door of the church:
1. The Lord as the Head of the church is standing outside the degraded church, knocking at her door.
2. We must realize and hold on to one principle: God's presence is the criterion for every matter; regardless of what we do, we must pay attention to whether or not we have God's presence—Exo. 33:11, 14; 2 Cor. 2:10; Psa. 27:8; 105:4.
B. The door is the door of the church, but the door is opened by individual believers:
1. The church in Laodicea has knowledge but does not have the Lord's presence.
2. The Lord is dealing with the whole church, but the acceptance of the Lord's dealing in order to feast on Him must be a personal and subjective matter.
V. "He who overcomes, to him I will give to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat with My Father on His throne. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches"—Rev. 3:21-22:
A. Here to overcome is to overcome the lukewarmness and pride of the degraded recovered church, to pay the price to buy the needed items, and to open the door so that the Lord can come in; Christ as the unique Overcomer includes all the overcomers.
B. To sit with the Lord on His throne will be a prize to the overcomer, so that he may participate in the Lord's authority and be a co-king with Him in ruling over the whole earth in the coming millennial kingdom.
C. We need to see that the seven epistles in Revelation 2 and 3 were written as one book to the seven churches; these epistles were addressed by the Lord to the seven particular churches separately (2:1, 8, 12, 18; 3:1, 7, 14), but they were sent not as seven books but as one book.
D. Although the contents of the seven epistles differ, at the end of each epistle there is the same closing word: "He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches"—2:7, 11, 17, 29; 3:6, 13, 22:
1. This means that each epistle was written to all the churches, and it indicates that in all the positive things of the Lord Jesus, the churches should be the same; in the Lord's speaking to the seven churches, the positive things were commended, strengthened, encouraged, and exalted by the Lord for their abounding.
2. The seven churches differed abnormally only in the negative things, which were rebuked, judged, condemned, and corrected by the Lord for elimination.
E. If the lukewarm church forgets all her dead knowledge and listens to the speaking of the living and burning Spirit, she will be delivered from her degraded condition.