What Jesus Thinks of Your Respectable Religion

from an exposition of Revelation 3:14-22

How do you like your religion? Cool? Sophisticated? Respectable? You’re not opposed to Jesus. You don’t discourage your spouse or kids from going to church. You’re in favor of religion. You even consider yourself to be a Christian. You might even be in church some Sundays, as long as there is nothing else more important to do at the time. You wish the church the best; you wish that more people would believe. It’s good for society, especially the kids. You won’t actually do much to support the church, because you’re interested in other things. You go about their business or enjoy your hobbies. But you really do wish the church would grow. You are nice, very nice. And Jesus says to you – the same Jesus who ate with traitors and befriended prostitutes, spoke kindly with the immoral – that same Jesus tells you and other nice, very nice, occasionally church-going, up-standing citizens like you, “You make me sick.”

Jesus immediately charges the nice, respectably religious folk, “You are neither cold nor hot.” They weren’t cold. They weren’t opposed to Christ. They still considered themselves Christians. They were the church, after all. And they did have some feeling of warmth. They probably even prided themselves on having matured, on growing past the immature zeal of young Christians, always talking about being “on fire for God.” They knew better than that. “Cool it,” was probably their advice. ‘Sure, we love Jesus, but come on, we have lives to live. Let’s keep things in perspective. A little religion is fine, but let’s not go over-board. Let’s make sure the service is over by noon so we can make it to the Laodicean restaurants before the crowds. We want cool, refined, sophisticated religion.’ That was the Laodicean mentality.

People want a respectable, Sunday morning religion, and they think a little of that is more pleasing to Jesus than nothing at all. But we see right here that the opposite is true. When we give Jesus just a little, a little bit of lukewarm attention, we make Him angrier than if we had done nothing at all. If Jesus is worth anything, He is worth everything. Of all the things we could have done to Him, to be mild about Him, is the worst. Saying you believe in Him but living as if Jesus weren’t really that important gains you greater judgment than if you’d never professed to be for Him at all. We see that clearly here: Jesus says, “Would that you were either cold or hot!” (Revelation 3:15).

Jesus would rather we be opposed to Him than mildly for Him. Jesus deserves the greatest passion, either for Him or against Him. Those who oppose Him with a passion – who are ice cold toward Him at least honor Him by showing that He deserves some kind of passion. They show that they believe Jesus is worth being committed to being against. They show they believe Jesus provokes some kind of firm decision. They feel no love for Him; they claim no love for Him; they are completely cold, unresponsive to Him. They’ve made their decision and are frozen in it. But, even though it is the wrong decision, at least they honor Jesus enough to have made a decision about Him. If Jesus is real, then He is the most wonderful thing; but if He is not real, then He is the worst possible impostor, and we should oppose Him with all our might. It is this in-between, a little cool, a little warm, that makes no sense; that dishonors Him the most.

Notice that He doesn’t say, ‘You know, I appreciate you coming to church once in a while, giving a little money, saying you are a Christian. That’s nice.’ He doesn’t say that, or anything like that. He says, in verse 16, ‘You make Me sick!’ Literally it says there, “I am about to spit [or vomit] you out of my mouth.” Cold can be refreshing and hot can be tasty, but we rarely want food or drink that is lukewarm; that’s in between. We might find it disgusting and want to spit it out. You restaurant owners here know that the customers want either hot food — so you have a stove to get it hot — or cool drinks — so you have a refrigerator. They get upset if their food or drink is room temperature. Jesus is the same way about you.

So He is saying, ‘Be one or the other. Make up your mind! You’d be better off joining the atheists, denouncing “the God delusion” (as an atheist book does). You’d be better off an out-and-out opponent of the gospel than a lukewarm, half-hearted, so-called Christian.

The Lord Jesus here is seething with deep anger that these people who profess to believe in Him would so dishonor Him by – not with Satanic symbols, or sexual perversion – but by coming to church, singing the songs, bowing in prayer, hearing the Word, and not coming to a boil, leaving just barely warmed up, with no passion for the Word, no fire in the bones, no burning desire for the growth of the gospel.

The Lord Jesus would rather we be pagans or perverts or atheists living for money alone; Jesus would rather we be all of those things than mild, respectably religious people who hear His Word Sunday after Sunday and leave never set on fire by it, never really passionate about Christ, never panting for Him, as the deer pants for water; never breathing out that desperate prayer, in the words of Psalm 75:25, “Whom have I in heaven but You and there is nothing on earth I desire besides you?”. To stroll through your life never caring enough about Jesus to either love Him or hate Him, that will be the worst for you.

Those, Jesus says, He will spit them out of His mouth. Jesus bears down on the problem that is causing them to be spat out. “For you say, ‘I am rich, I have prospered”(3:17). They boast about their wealth. They are successful. Laodicea was a prosperous city, exporting fine black wool and medicines, like eye salves. They were so rich, when the city was destroyed by an earthquake in 60 AD, they could rebuild it themselves without any help needed from the central government in Rome. (Imagine an American city getting wiped out by a natural disaster and telling the federal government that the city doesn’t need its help!) They didn’t need the help of out-siders. The church there was the same way. “I need nothing,” they said to themselves. Like the city after the earth-quake, their attitude was that they don’t need help; they can take care of themselves; they have everything under control. “I need nothing.”

They are, then, the opposite of the church in Philadelphia we looked at last week. The church in Philadelphia was needy, and they knew they were needy; they had, the Lord Jesus said, “little power,” but that was ok because that way they knew they were desperately dependent. The church in Laodicea, however, thinks it has a lot of power; that it’s not desperate or dependent. It’s rich and so can afford to pay for the best preachers, and have the finest building. It’s impressive. That self-satisfaction made Jesus sick of them.

It’s the same today. The church that thinks it has the money or the facilities or the skills to make it happen, that thinks it doesn’t need anything, is the church that makes Him sick. Such a church doesn’t pray, really pray. You look at the attendance of their prayer meetings, if they’re real prayer meetings and not just shows to draw in an audience; look at how many people come to pray to see how dependent they felt themselves to be. It doesn’t pray because it feels it doesn’t have to. The programs, the personalities, and the plans will address the problems and bring people in, they think. There is no sense of desperately needing God. No sense that unless God comes and does what only He can do – turn cold, sinful hearts into hearts aflame for Him – then all is lost; no sense that we need a miracle now, to renew us and revive us, to rekindle the flame that once burned bright.

Respectable, Sunday-morning religion made of people who think “I need nothing,” doesn’t pray. They don’t think they need to. They feel good about themselves: prosperous, healthy, everything under control. And if they do pray, it’s for the only needs they feel, not spiritual needs (because we’re satisfied that’s ok), but for temporary life for dying bodies rather than eternal life for dying souls. And all that makes the Savior sick to His stomach.

Jesus says, ‘I love you; that’s why I’ve said all this. You were in such denial, so deceived by yourself, so I had to show you what I could see.’ So, “be zealous,” literally, “be hot.” Don’t be cold. Jesus does not really want us to be cold; He would rather we be cold than lukewarm, but most of all, He wants us to be hot. Give Him the zeal He is worth.

For the entire exposition of Revelation 3:14-22, listen:

Covenant Reformed Baptist Church is Danville’s & Caswell County’s Reformed church.