By Peta Hills
I found out I was down to preach today a little over a week ago. For about three days I kept saying,”what do you want me to preach on Lord?” When I got no response from him I thought about topics that I could preach on. What was going on in my life that God was using for me to get across to others? That is often a fairly ‘safe’ way to preach. You are able to put across a spiritual sounding sermon, looking genuinely contrite for what God was doing in your life and if you word it right you will look like you are shining with a halo on, looking like you have worked through so much with God and your rust has been rubbed of and is shining gold.
Then last Sunday at church at the start of worship last week I felt like I had to stand up. Then He spoke. Only one word, but he did speak. He said ‘complacency.’ When I looked around I saw people sitting down, comfortable in their chairs, some singing, some not. Now I am not saying that you have to be standing up to properly worship God that is not the case. You can worship him sitting, standing, lying, or any way that you are at the time you are worshipping. What I want to put across is a heart attitude, about me. I have grown complacent. I am comfortable. I am as the dictionary defines complacency – a feeling of quiet pleasure or security, often while unaware of some potential danger, defect, or the like; self-satisfaction or smug satisfaction with an existing situation, condition, etc.
What does the Bible say about complacency. Let’s look at Revelation 3:14-22 and we see the Church of Laodicea.
To the Church in Laodicea
14″To the angel of the church in Laodicea write:
These are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the ruler of God’s creation. 15I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! 16So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth. 17You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. 18I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see. 19Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest, and repent. 20Here 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 him, and he with me. 21To him who overcomes, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I overcame and sat down with my Father on his throne. 22He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”
The church had grown content. They were so content that Jesus – the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the ruler of God’s creation – wished that they were either hot or cold, that they were either for him or against him.
This city was so rich that after an earthquake in 60 AD, they turned down government money to rebuild their city because they had plenty of their own. Laodicea produced high quality wool that was turned into the high fashions of the day. They had a prominent hospital that had developed an ointment to improve people’s vision. And yet, Jesus tells them vs. 17.
(17You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.)
What did Jesus mean? They were far from being naked or poor. Everything around them was good. No persecution. Plenty of money. Life was easy. They were living the 1st century’s version of the Australian dream. People looking at them would’ve said, “If that’s what following Jesus is all about, then sign me up.” They seemed like model Christian communities.
The problem these churches were facing was that they didn’t have any problems. But when things are easy, the relationship has the tendency to go stale. They weren’t being tested at all, they grew complacent.
Verse17 digs into the depth of their problem. Because you say, “I am rich, and have become wealthy, and have need of nothing,” and you do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked.
Affluence had lulled the church to sleep. The members were wealthy in material good, but poor spiritually. The lack of spiritual receptivity, devotion and faith in God manifested in a lukewarm state is revealed in the exaltation of material wealth in contrast to spiritual riches. The Laodiceans were prosperous as far as material goods were concerned. Christ quotes them as boasting I am rich.
This complacency is distasteful to God. If something is distasteful what is the first thing that you are going to do. You are most likely not going to quietly finish eating it and then swallow it, you are going to spit it out quickly, even violently to get it out of your mouth, you might even then wash your mouth out with something that you know will remove the taste, the feel of what was in there. When you are neither hot nor cold that is how God feels about you being lukewarm.
Jesus’ repugnancy is expressed in a descriptive fashion. He will spit out of His mouth. If you are unmoved or unaroused by the gospel of His life, death, and resurrection, you make Him sick. Christ gets angry with people who renounce their beliefs but He gets sick at indifference.
Also when I say spit, I don’t mean a careful spit into a handkerchief. I mean a huge great hack. Lukewarm Christianity makes Jesus sick! This is better explained by some older Bibles. The King James Bible says God will ‘spue us out of his mouth.’ Wycliffe says that he ‘will begin to vomit us out.’ God’s reaction is more like a gag reflex that is present when we eat or drink something off.
One day I had Nathan home sick from school. I can’t remember what was wrong, but I know it wasn’t for anything to do with his stomach as I bought us two chocolate milks. I gave his to him and he began drinking, and I started to drink mine. It didn’t taste too good so I checked the date. It was about two months paste it’s use by date and when I realised that I had ingested bad milk I started gagging. I tried not to vomit, but it just was not possible. What made it bad was that I was driving at the time. We were going to Broadmeadows to do the shopping. I had to go back home to get changed. I had made a very big mess of myself.
God thinks of lukewarmness in the same way that my stomach thought of the milk. There was no way that milk was remaining in my stomach, neither is someone who is lukewarm going to remain in God.
Our inner spiritual fire is always in constant danger of dying down. It needs to be poked, fed and fanned into flame. The idea of being on fire for Christ will strike some people as dangerous emotionalism. Fanaticism is not what is intended here. Fanaticism is unreasoning and unintelligent. It is action without reflection. What Jesus Christ desires and deserves is the reflection which leads to commitment. If Jesus is true, if He is the Son of God who became flesh; died for our sins and was raised from the dead; if Christmas Day, Good Friday, and Easter are more than meaningless holidays, then nothing less than our wholehearted commitment to Christ will do! This means putting Him first in our private and public life, seeking His glory and obeying His will. Better to be icy in rejection than to insult Him and the gospel with half-hearted indifference that communicates to the world that it means nothing to you. There is no point in coming to church if you are going to continue in your sin, your indifference, your lukewarmness. I am not saying stop coming to church so you can continue to sin, I am saying stop your deliberate sin, stop putting other things before God and seek him out wholeheartedly. Remove those idols that are removing you from the presence of sin. Seek him out with all that you have.
One group of people that I have great respect for, even though a lot of them are strange, whacky even kooky, are intercessors. They will praise God in all things, with all things, they will dance, pray, wave flags, play with their tambourines, think of Paula. They are lovely wacky, lovely kooky but when they are worshipping they are never complacent. They are white hot for God.
Although God didn’t make us all intercessors, he made it possible for all of us to be fanatical for him like the intercessors are. Now not all intercessors will express themselves in such obvious ways as the intercessors do, some will simply pray with the earnest belief that id God is for us who can be against us.
As a church we need to always be seeking God, not just by conducting nice tasteful church but by seeking him in ways that we have never sought before. WE need not be lukewarm.
Someone who is lukewarm is content or complacent in the position that they are in. When we are complacent we are like the soldier who stops to get a drink and is enjoying what is around him and doesn’t notice the enemy sneak up behind him until it is too late. Satan is our enemy. He is a liar. He is going to tell you that what you are doing is okay that there is nothing wrong with what you are doing if it is taking you away from God. Look at the fruit of what you are doing. If you think your actions are okay and that people are being blessed and you are continually being refreshed by God, then what you are doing is most likely being sanctioned by God but if the fruit is rotten and your relationship with him is suffering there is something wrong and you need to look at what you are doing.
If you are unsure if what you are doing is right or not ask someone. They will be more than willing to help you if they can. The church of Laodicea was given a warning through the book of Revelation; we have both the Bible and other church members. Please do not leave here today without looking at your hot or coldness. Are you lukewarm? Check up with the Bible to see if where you are at is where He wants you to be. Continually keep reading your bible, looking at yourself. Keep short accounts with God of the things that you have done wrong. That way you will not grow complacent, as it says ‘familiarity breeds contempt.
