SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/24/2015
11:29 AM
My Worship Time Focus: Introduction to Laodicea
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Revelation
3:14-22
Message
of the verses: “14 "To the
angel of the church in Laodicea write: The Amen, the faithful and true Witness,
the Beginning of the creation of God, says this: 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, 18 I advise you to buy from Me gold refined by fire so
that you may become rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself,
and that the shame of your nakedness will not be revealed; and eye salve to
anoint your eyes so that you may see. 19 ’Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline; therefore be zealous and repent. 20 ’Behold, I
stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I
will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me. 21 ’He who
overcomes, I will grant to him to sit down with Me on My throne, as I also
overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne. 22 ’He who has an ear, let
him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.’"
Well we have finally made it to the beginning
of the last church that the glorified Christ sends a letter to, and this church
spiritually is at the bottom. Laodicea
is the last stop on the mail route that included everyone of the other church
we studied thus far. I just wonder what
the messenger or Pastor who first read this letter thought. If one goes by the prophetic view of the order
of churches that we spoke about in previous SD’s then this would be the
dominant church in the world before our Lord returns in the rapture to take us
to be with Him. Hal Lindsey states in
his commentary that this church became dominant beginning in 1900. This church could be called the lukewarm
church.
I do not find it a coincident that I
have been studying the major prophets for the last few years and am now at this
present time am studying the books of Revelation and also Ezekiel, for there
are parallels between what happened to Israel and what is happening to the
churches in the world today. If you go
back all the way to when God created the heavens and the earth and then created
man on the sixth day only to have man sin and bring sin upon the earth to which
its effects are still seen today, you find that God was providing a way for man
to come back into fellowship with Him through the promised seed of the woman found
in Genesis 3:15. We then see that God
had to judge the earth and all who live on it with a flood that covered the
entire world and killed all life that needed air to breathe with the exception
of those who were on the ark that Noah built.
Mankind has come from those eight people who were on that ark. Later God had to scramble the languages
because of the sinfulness of man and finally God called a man named Abram to
begin a people that we know today as the Jewish people. Some four hundred years after Abraham his descendants
were found in Egypt right where God told him they would be. God was forming a nation in order to have a
people who would write down His Law and who would also be the people that
Messiah, the Seed of the woman would come from.
God would use Moses to bring His people out of Egypt by doing ten great
miracles that would bring Egypt to its knees in defeat. After leaving Egypt the people of Israel
sinned against the Lord and wondered around the wilderness for forty years
before coming into the Promised Land lead by Joshua. Their history was up and down spiritually,
but mostly the line would go down and finally God would judge them. The writer of 2 Kings writes the following in
2 Kings 17:7-23 “7 Now this came about because the sons of Israel had sinned
against the LORD their God, who had brought them up from the land of Egypt from
under the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and they had feared other gods 8 and
walked in the customs of the nations whom the LORD had driven out before the
sons of Israel, and in the customs of the kings of Israel which they had
introduced. 9 The sons of Israel did things secretly which were not right
against the LORD their God. Moreover, they built for themselves high places in
all their towns, from watchtower to fortified city. 10 They set for themselves
sacred pillars and Asherim on every high hill and under every green tree, 11 and
there they burned incense on all the high places as the nations did which the LORD
had carried away to exile before them; and they did evil things provoking the
LORD. 12 They served idols, concerning which the LORD had said to them,
"You shall not do this thing." 13 Yet the LORD warned Israel and
Judah through all His prophets and every seer, saying, "Turn from your
evil ways and keep My commandments, My statutes according to all the law which
I commanded your fathers, and which I sent to you through My servants the
prophets." 14 However, they did not listen, but stiffened their neck like
their fathers, who did not believe in the LORD their God. 15 They rejected His
statutes and His covenant which He made with their fathers and His warnings
with which He warned them. And they followed vanity and became vain, and went
after the nations which surrounded them, concerning which the LORD had
commanded them not to do like them. 16 They forsook all the commandments of the
LORD their God and made for themselves molten images, even two calves, and made
an Asherah and worshiped all the host of heaven and served Baal. 17 Then they
made their sons and their daughters pass through the fire, and practiced
divination and enchantments, and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the
LORD, provoking Him. 18 So the LORD was very angry with Israel and removed them
from His sight; none was left except the tribe of Judah. 19 Also Judah did not
keep the commandments of the LORD their God, but walked in the customs which
Israel had introduced. 20 The LORD rejected all the descendants of Israel and afflicted
them and gave them into the hand of plunderers, until He had cast them out of
His sight. 21 When He had torn Israel from the house of David, they made
Jeroboam the son of Nebat king. Then Jeroboam drove Israel away from following
the LORD and made them commit a great sin. 22
The sons of Israel walked in all the sins of Jeroboam which he did; they
did not depart from them 23 until the
LORD removed Israel from His sight, as He spoke through all His servants the
prophets. So Israel was carried away into exile from their own land to Assyria
until this day.”
Now as we read of the demise of
Israel we also have been looking at what Judah did seen through the eyes of
Ezekiel, and in the end they sinned greater than Israel and God took them into
captivity in Babylon. One may wonder why
I would bother to write this very brief history of Israel and Judah. Well as we get to the church of Laodicea we
find a church that is in a similar situation and we will also see what the Lord
has to say to this lukewarm church. One
point to be made here and that is that God still has plans for Israel as seen
through the prophets in the OT and also in the writings of the NT, especially
Romans 9-11 where Paul writes about Israel and their future, but none the less
the sinfulness of the nation of Israel surely found itself into the lives of
the people of the New Testament Church.
John MacArthur writes “Tragically, the sorrowful unbelief of Israel
finds a parallel in the church. There
are many people in churches, even entire congregations, who are lost. They may be sincere, zealous, and outwardly religious,
but they reject the gospel truth. They
have all the rich New Covenant teachings about Christ’s life, death, and
resurrection contained in Bibles they neither believe nor obey. As a result, they are doomed, just as
unbelieving Israel was. Paul described
them as those ‘holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its
power,’ and then wisely consoled believers to ‘avoid such men as these’ (2Tim.
3:5).”
As we look at the church at Laodicea
we will find out that this church represents apostate churches that are found
and have been found in the world since the church age began. We mentioned that there was a downward spiral
that began in Ephesus with those believers leaving their first love and now it
ends with the apostate church of Laodicea where we find Christ at the door
trying to get in as seen in Rev. 3:10.
Spiritual
meaning for my life today: Paul
wrote that as believers we are to learn from the sinfulness of those believers
found in the Old Testament. I can also
learn that the key to avoiding this slide is to continue to love the Lord,
remembering those first days when I became a believer and the richness that
Christ brought into my life.
Answer
to yesterday’s Bible question: “Abraham”
(Genesis 18:23-32).
Today’s
Bible question: “Who authored the book,
the Song of Solomon?”
Answer
in our next SD.
2/24/2015
12:14 PM
No comments:
Post a Comment