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| October 29, 2003 Dear Family and Friends: Have you ever
been strongly convicted by
the challenge of a visiting missionary or evangelist? I was in such
a position a few years ago when Dan Bender, our church’s missionary
to Tecate, This is a passage many of us will find familiar, if we have grown up attending church. “I know thy works,” says Christ, “that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would that thou wert cold or hot.” What a surprise, when you first read it. Jesus would rather Laodicea be cold than lukewarm! In fact, he has good things to say about Sardis, the church that is dead while having a reputation for being alive. Coldness is preferable to indifference – and human experience confirms that the opposite of love is not hatred, but apathy. But the challenge Dan made that day was on the level of a gut-check. “Raise your hands,” he said, “if you are on fire for God. If you truly believe today that you would do anything, give up anything, go anywhere God asked you to.” A few hands, praise God, were raised. I wanted to raise mine, but I realized I wouldn’t have been honest at that time. “Now,” he said, asking if, like Jonah, anyone was absolutely cold towards the things of God, running from the Lord, positively resentful toward him, reluctant to be there that morning., but nevertheless willing to raise their hands and admit it. I don’t think anyone was, to no one’s surprise, I’m sure. “The rest of you,” he announced, “are admitting that you are lukewarm by definition.” Now, to be precise with the scriptures, the Laodicean church’s main problem was that Christ was on the outside, making appeals to whoever would listen and open the door. I think that’s another way of saying that this church had excluded Christ, and wasn’t the true church at all. So, those of us who weren’t able to raise our hands, how do we account for our occasional indifference, our lukewarmness as opposed to fervent (fiery) service, if we aren’t really Christ-excluding Laodiceans? Another scripture exhorts, “be not conformed to this world; but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind…” (Rom. 12:2) The command implicitly affirms that the error is possible--nothing less than conformity to the Laodicean spirit of the age. Thankfully, Jesus lovingly counsels the proper remedy for problems of each of the five churches in the Revelation account against whom he had complaints. To Laodicea: “I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich,” he says. His language reminds us of 1 Cor. 3:11-15, the trying fire for rewards of service. Christ is offering a fire sale. The gold he offers has already passed through the fire; it is of the purest quality and won’t diminish when going through the fire again. Note also that this gold is offered to Laodicea. As the seventh of the Asia-Minor churches in Rev. 2-3, Bible commentators usually interpret the Laodicean letter as signifying the state of the church age at the very end times. How could the Laodicean age hope to share in the quality of the wages given the very first, apostolic one, (Ephesus), which was involved in the foundational work of the church? I can’t help but think of our Lord’s parable of the laborers in Matt. 20:1-16. The last laborers, hired at 5:00 PM, just before sundown, because of the grace of the Master, were given a generous full-day’s wages, just as the first. The Lord’s fire sale compels me to give whatever I can to purchase his gold. What a sale! I can trade that which I cannot keep for that which I cannot lose, as Missionary Jim Elliot wrote. The harvest in the parable is what drives the need for laborers. The Master needed added laborers again and again, and the wage paid speaks not only of his generosity, but his desperation to finish the harvest. And if we can infer that far, there’s another motivator for us, a more chilling one, one toward which we can’t afford to be indifferent: the vineyard in which the laborers harvest, and its ripeness, remind us of the sobering apocalyptic passage: “he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of almighty God.” (Rev. 19:15) The account of the seven churches in Revelation 3 closes with the Laodiceans. The next chapter sees John “raptured”, caught up into heaven and the judgment beginning. After the harvest time is past comes the wrath poured out on that which remains. I pray you’ll join us in prayer not only for the great reward of the Master’s approval, but that that harvest would be fully brought in. “One day closer!” (Romans 13:11) Love, |