Sermon Cloud

Those of you that are married, do you remember the good ol' days when you used to get love letters? Yeah, I remember all the way back to Tuesday morning, when I went to get dressed and found this really nice note from my wife. She'd laid it out before she'd gone to bed the night before. My birthday card, very sweet, full of loving things. But since I'm not too big on PDA, I'll spare you the details.
It does feel nice, though, doesn't it; to get notes from people you love that make you feel warm and fuzzy. Keep that in mind as we listen to Jesus' letters to the church in Sardis and the church in Laodicea.
Revelation 3:1-6, 14-22
Not so warm and fuzzy, huh? Such a contrast from the letters we looked at last week. The tone of the letters was overwhelmingly positive. Jesus is heaping praise on them, "you're doing great, hang in there, you're going to win this battle." Jesus was encouraging them for standing up to persecution.
But the letters to Sardis and Laodicea are the exact opposite. Almost completely negative. Jesus is telling these two churches, "you're so far from being the type of church I want you to be, you are not honoring me."
I heard a great line this week, "sometimes scripture is meant to comfort the afflicted and sometimes it's meant to afflict the comfortable." And that's exactly what's going on here.
I'm thinking this letter came as a pretty nasty surprise. Life was good for the people in these churches. Sardis was the richest city in the area, the Johnson County of the region. The local legend was that when the city was founded, gold was discovered in a nearby river. No one really knew if that was true, but in John's time, there was plenty of gold to go around. Mostly due to the thriving businesses and the excellent farmland. It seems from this letter that the Christian community was just as rich as everyone else in the city.
Things were similar in Laodicea. 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.
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 American 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.
But Jesus tells them this in verse 1, and it has been haunting me this week. Vs.1b To the outside observer, it looked like they had it all together, relationship with Christ is thriving, but the reality is that it's shriveling away, it's on life-support. And that was repulsing to Christ. Vs 15-16 Probably the harshest verse in Revelation.
Laodicea got it's water from two nearby cities, Colossae and Hieropolis. Hieropolis was known for it's hot springs and Colossae had access to good cold water. Water was transported to Laodicea via Roman aquaducts. The water would slowly travel through these aquaducts and by the time it got to Laodicea, the water was tepid. Which tastes gross. The churches were the same way. Just sitting there. Not being tested. Things were easy.
The problem these churches were facing was that they didn't have any problems. Following me? Last week it was persecution. If you know that following Jesus may cost you your life, then you know where you stand. You're committed. But when things are easy, the relationship has the tendency to go stale. They weren't being tested at all, they grew complacent.
It was great to spend time last Sunday praying for persecuted Christians. We fasted on Wednesday on behalf of the persecuted church. But I don't know if I've ever preached a sermon that was more disconnected from our everyday life than last week. I got the same sense in our small group discussion that night. All the talk about persecution was hypothetical, we don't know what that's like.
This temptation to become complacent, to just mail it in, this is where we're living. Jesus might as well have been talking to us. The barriers to living for Jesus don't come from the outside. They come from within. That natural tendency to just take it easy, slack off in our commitment to Christ. Things still look good on the outside, but inside the relationship is shriveling away.
The biggest problem to us living for Jesus is us. The same is true of our church. The biggest barrier to us being a church that honors Jesus is us. Our own temptation to become complacent.
A few days ago, I was at a meeting with my District Superintendent. That's his official title, his unofficial title is my pastor. The guy who leads our denomination's churches in the Kansas City area. We were talking about ways to help churches in the area live out our mission, basically honor Jesus. Someone asked Jeren what he thought was the biggest threat to our churches. He didn't even hesitate, "consumerism." We've trained people to be consumers. We've trained people to think of churches as dispensers of religious goods and services. "Come to our church because we've got the best preacher, the best music, the best looking people..." Rather than being churches that call people to worship Christ, to serve Christ, we've taught people to bow down at the altar of self, to serve the self. Which leads to an attitude of "here I am, feed me, serve me. I'm waiting."
And as church leaders, we've done a great job of training people to think like consumers. As long as _____ keeps happening, then I'll keep showing up, serving and giving. But when the Pastor makes me mad or you look at me wrong, or even when it becomes inconvenient, I'm oughta here. But even if you don't make me mad, when a better preacher moves to town or some bigger church can put on a better show, then I'm hopping to another church."
The church does not exist to equip people to be more efficient servants of self. We're to be a counter-cultural community. We are here to challenge people to die to self so they can live for Jesus. Maybe that should be our new slogan, "Welcome to Trinity Family. Prepare to die."
But it's hard to die to self when things are easy. I was talking with a guy this week about what it means to follow Jesus. He asked me, "why don't more people give their life to Jesus?" We talked about it a bit and came to the conclusion, because it's just too hard. Following Jesus is not easy. Living with a 100% commitment to Jesus isn't easy, either. It's a lot easier to live at the 75-85% level. Complacency.
Jesus told us that we won't find true life until we lose our lives for his sake. No government official is going to be taking our lives, so it's left up to us. Do we want to keep going through the motions, living for Jesus when it's convenient, ignoring some of the harder things he told us to do? Or are we going to die?
I started out by saying that this letter feels like the opposite of a warm and fuzzy love letter. But this is actually the truest form of a love letter. Jesus says these harsh things because he loves the churches. Vs 19 He's disciplining them because he wants so much more for them. He wants them to a experience a life that's totally sold out to Jesus. Forget this complacency, half-hearted crap. That's no way to live. The only way to truly follow Jesus is to follow him with a wreck-less abandon. pause
Listen to verse 20, I want you to picture this image in your mind. Vs 20 Jesus is knocking. He's locked out of his own church. From the lives of people who say they belong to him. Don't let that be you, don't let that be Trinity Family. The biggest barrier to living a life that honors Jesus is you. The biggest barrier to our church honoring Jesus is us.
We open up our hearts, we say "Jesus, I'm yours. Rearrange my life in whatever way you want. You've got free reign, I'm yours." And here's what Jesus promises those who die to self and live for him. Vs 21-22

Prayer