SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/27/2015
1:43 PM
My Worship Time Focus: Christ’s Concern for Laodicea
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Revelation 3:15-17
Message of the
verses: “15 ’I know your deeds, that
you are neither cold nor hot; I wish that you were cold or hot. 16 ’So because
you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of My mouth. 17
’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,”
At this point in the other letters Christ would say
something good about the church but there is nothing good to say about this
church so He goes into the concerns that He has for them. Now even though Christ did not chose to use
His description from the vision in chapter one we know that Christ is the all
seeing, all knowing God who rules over the churches and so the first thing that
He says to them is that He knows their deeds.
Christ is speaking of their works that are done after a person is saved
by grace through faith, and those works or fruits or deeds give evidence that
that person is truly saved. You are not
saved by works, but as I said saved by grace through faith as Ephesians 2:8-9
tell us, but verse 10 speaks of the works that God planned for us to do before
the world was made. Many people get the
wrong idea when the read James, thinking that James is teaching that a person
is saved by their works, but that is not what he is saying at all, he is simply
saying that if you are saved you will be doing works for the Lord, and as
Christ looked through His all seeing, all knowing eyes He saw no works that
this church was doing, and that means that there were no believers in this
church.
Next He rebukes them for being lukewarm, and it would
have better for them if they were either hot or cold, now hot means that they
were on fire for the Lord, which would be best and cold would mean that they
knew nothing about the Lord and it would be easier to have those saved than the
lukewarm people in this church. We wrote
earlier about the lukewarm water that the people in this city had to drink and
that lukewarm water had many impurities in it, so much so that one can look at
pictures of the rocks that the water was flowing through and see that it was
mostly clogged up with impurities. Their
church was full of impurities, impurities like so many churches are today, like
not believing that Christ is God, and that is the first thing one has to
believe about Him. The water in the
other two cities in this valley had hot springs or cold water that came from
the mountain and this represented what we hear Christ say about what this
church would have been better of being.
This is a lukewarm apostate church who though they needed nothing,
thought they were rich, and yet were poor.
Christ tells them in essence that they made Him sick and
so He would vomit them out of His mouth.
Let us look at what Christ will tell a church or people like this when
He judges them: “22 "Many will say to Me on that day, ’Lord,
Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and
in Your name perform many miracles?’ 23 “And then I will declare to them, ’I
never knew you; DEPART FROM ME, YOU WHO PRACTICE LAWLESSNESS’ (Matt. 7:22-23).”
Now
I have been writing in earlier SD’s how my study of Ezekiel makes me think of
things that I am studying in Revelation.
We know that the Jews were chosen by God to do many things for Him, and
were given many blessings too, and yet they turned their backs on God and as we
have seen in Ezekiel God’s wrath was upon them as He took them out of their
land. As we look at the New Testament we
see that Christ came to die upon a cross for the sins of those would accept Him
as Lord and Savior, and we also know that at least in this time period there
are many Bibles to read telling about this, and yet people are in churches
today that the Bible has no effect on how they live their lives for they do not
believe what it says about salvation.
Just as Israel turned their backs on God so many people in apostate
churches today do the same thing and God will judge them for this. John MacArthur quotes a man named R. W. Scott
who writes “Perhaps none of the seven letters is more appropriate to the
twentieth-century church than this. It
describes vividly the respectable, sentimental, nominal, skin-deep religiosity
which is so widespread among us today.
Our Christianity is flabby and anemic.
We appear to have taken a lukewarm bath of religion.”
As
mentioned these people thought they were rich when indeed they were poor,
blind, and also naked. They were being
self deceived in what they were being taught.
I have to say that too many people today put God in a box, they make up
their own God and live like their God wants them to live and this gets them in
a world of trouble as the God they made up to satisfy themselves has little
truth in it when compared to the God of the Bible. Satan was doing a good job in making these
people spiritually blind and he continues to do this in churches just like this
one today in the 21st century.
Spiritual meaning for my life today: I must make sure that the things that I believe
about God are true and come from the Word of God so that I do not begin to sink
to where these people had sunk.
My Steps of Faith for Today: To love the Lord with all of my heart, soul,
mind, and strength, and to better understand the love that Christ has for me
and to live in that love.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “Because he was very rich”
(Luke 18:22-23).
Today’s Bible
question: “What did Jesus advise if one
lights a candle?”
Answer in our next SD.
2/27/2015 2:25 PM
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