today, which can be found in Revelation chapter 3, and I’ll be reading from verses 14 to 22. To the angel of the church in Laodicea, write: These are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the ruler of God’s creation. I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other. So, because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I’m about to spit you out of my mouth. You say, “I am rich. I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.” But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich, and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness, and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see. Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So, be earnest and repent. Here I am. I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me. To him who overcomes, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I overcame and sat down with my father on his throne. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. >> Mhm. >> Mhm. >> So this morning we’re we’re beginning a fairly short series of a few weeks uh based on the Great Commission. These are the final words that Jesus spoke to his followers, his disciples, at the end of the Gospel of Matthew, very familiar to us. We read the the Great Commission. It’s “Then Jesus came to them and said, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I’ve commanded you. Surely I’m with you to the very end of the age.'” So we’ve had several group discussions the last month or so centered on this Great Commission, what it means for us as a church at Knox, and we’ve been asking ourselves the question, “What if Jesus’ final words were meant to shape everything we do at Knox Church? What would it look like for us to embrace and fulfill this commission in our slice of time, in our little generation, keeping this commission central in everything we try to do, everything we attempt in our church fellowship, in our activities? Because surely the most obvious thing about this Great Commission is that it didn’t come with an expiry date. If Jesus had spoken those words just to a single generation of first-century followers, and they had done everything they could for the rest of their lives to make disciples, and then they died, then sadly, despite all their efforts, Christianity would have gone extinct after one generation. All we’d be left with today would be a few manuscript fragments telling of us us about this little short-lived movement within the Roman Empire based on the life of an obscure Palestinian peasant named Jesus Christ. If disciple making had ended with those individuals that the commission of Jesus was originally spoken to, none of us would be here this morning. So, it’s obvious that those who Jesus commissioned to make disciples, they were to reproduce their process and their product. They were to make committed disciples of Jesus Christ who would do the same for others and just keep that movement going. And the commission, it’s not simple addition. It’s not just a mechanically add a few converts to the roster every year. It was to exponentially reproduce families and communities of disciples like ourselves who in turn would become disciple makers and keep that ministry thriving. You know, the classic math on this, it never works out quite this way, but the classic math is that if you and I at Knox Church worked really hard together and we put together a lot of large evangelistic events and through our efforts we could bring a thousand converts to Christ every year in Old Strathcona in our city. If we did that, then over the next couple of decades we’d add 20,000 new believers to the kingdom of God and that would be pretty good for a church like us, wouldn’t it? But instead, if we were to quietly each lead one person to Christ this year and then work with them so that they weren’t merely converts, but they were they became solid disciples of Jesus Christ, followers, and if we commissioned them, if we baptized them, if we taught them the things that Jesus commanded them and did that effectively, then after that one intensive year of training, we could go off and try to lead someone else to Christ and and our and this newly trained disciple and equipped disciple could go out and lead someone of their own to Christ and help them grow. In that scenario, if we kept at up, our number of disciples every year, it would take a mere 33 years to win the entire current population of the world to Jesus Christ. So, as Christians, you and I are we’re not the product merely of addition. We’re the product of multiplication. We’re here because disciple makers spread over the face of the earth propagating followers of Jesus exponentially. They they intentionally, they faithfully carried out the marching orders of the commission, and this is the commission that’s now been handed down to us. And a commission like that that Jesus gives, it shouldn’t be thought of just as a leisurely civilian add-on or option in our lives. Commission often refers to a wartime thing. It’s something that’s issued to a qualified individual. They’ll serve as a military officer. They’re given authority and responsibility to go and lead others in a time of war. And many of many of us here might have read, you know, that classic beautiful modern defense of the Christian faith, C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity. Kind of interesting how that book came about. Because the BBC, the British Broadcasting Corporation, that was a template for the later CBC in Canada, it completed building its headquarters, Broadcasting House, in London in 1931. And the building was actually inscribed with a dedication to the almighty God with the prayer that its programming would encourage its listeners to tread the path of wisdom and righteousness. Its founding general director, a guy named Sir John Reith, was a devout Scotsman, and he ensured that the BBC would have would broadcast daily religious services and music and meditations throughout the week. And that was consistent at the time with Britain’s self-identity as a Christian nation. Although the director of BBC’s religious broadcasting department, Reverend J. Welch, he estimated that maybe 2/3 of BBC listeners went about their daily lives with no reference at all to God. And during the Second World War, he knew that that millions of British people were facing the nightly terror of the German bombing raids and the news of family members who’d been killed in combat, very real possibility of a German invasion. Reverend Welch had read C.S. Lewis’s book The Problem of Pain and he sensed that in Lewis there was a voice that might be able to bring strength and inspiration to the British people in a fresh way that they could grasp. And although Lewis himself seldom listened to the radio, when he was asked he agreed to travel to London and deliver a series of radio addresses on the subject of the Christian faith as I see it, by a layman. And those talks that Lewis gave, they were the ones that were edited to become his book Mere Christianity. So, Lewis would travel from Oxford to London to record the talks and it was not a trip without its risks. Regular German bombing raids continued. They often targeted BBC’s Broadcasting House. It was struck several times throughout the war. It did killed and it wounded many of its staff. Lewis knew that the people were largely illiterate with regards to the Bible and the Gospel. He told Welch that the New Testament authors took for granted that people had a consciousness of their unworthiness before God, but that in modern England we can’t at present assume that anymore. So, his radio addresses and his book begin with this line. Everyone has heard people quarreling. And he goes on to speak about how people operate with a standard of behavior themselves and they expect that standard of behavior from others, a law or a rule that comes from outside themselves and that was his way of explaining that in the intuitive understanding of sin and breaking the law that we all have and it resonated with his BBC listeners. Man named George Sayer says he heard a broadcast of Lewis in a pub filled with soldiers and he recalled how the bartender turned the radio on to Lewis at a quarter to 8:00, shouted out to everyone, “You listen to this bloke. He’s really worth listening to.” And for the next 15 minutes, the soldiers listened intently as did millions of other British people. One Air Marshal commented, “The war, the whole of life, everything tended to seem pointless. We needed, many of us, a key to the meaning of the universe. Lewis provided that. Better still, he gave us back our old traditional Christian faith.” And Lewis always viewed his work as a struggle between light and darkness and the consequences were eternal and he explained that Christianity was the story of how this faithful king had landed in disguise in enemy territory and is calling all of us to take part in a great campaign of sabotage. That’s what making disciples meant to C.S. Lewis. Our commission is a wartime commission and we’re all called to take this campaign of sabotage seriously. That leads us in our passage this morning to the book of Revelation where this ancient city of Laodicea may it might seem like a very odd place to begin a sermon series on the Great Commission, on the task of making disciples, but I think we’ll see it’s a helpful and it’s appropriate place for us to start. Cuz that final book of the Bible, the book of Revelation, it’s written in the form of a vision. It’s like a dream sequence in a movie. It reflects things about our present. It talks about our future and it seamlessly goes back and forth teaching us about life with Jesus in our present age and in the age to come. And in chapters 2 and 3 of the book of Revelation, we have a series of letters delivered from Jesus to seven specific churches in the region of what was called then Asia Minor. These are These were actual cities with churches Christian churches situated in what today would be Western Turkey. And although the letters were addressed to local congregations, Christians of all ages have been impressed on by the Holy Spirit to recognize these letters as timeless. They’re trans-local. They speak to the churches of Edmonton with just as much force as they spoke to the ancient original cities they were addressed to. And these seven letters, they have a prophetic quality to them. They They commend churches for what they’re doing well, and they identify some of the pathologies that have developed in the churches that are holding them back from being all they need to be for Jesus Christ. And in each letter, solutions are offered to help them overcome their pathologies, and it all climaxes with inheriting eternal life with Jesus. So, the letter we’re looking at this morning, the last of the letters, it’s unusual in that Jesus has nothing to commend, nothing positive, to commend the church at Laodicea for. In fact, here’s how Jesus expresses the pathology of their particular situation. He says, “I know your deeds. You’re neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other. So, because you’re lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I’m about to spit you out of my mouth.” Devastating words. I mean, could there ever be a more somber and negative evaluation of a church than that? Commentator Greg Beale, he’s written an extensive, very helpful commentary on the Book of Revelation. He makes an important observation to understand what Jesus is saying to the church of Laodicea. He notes that the way Jesus introduces himself to each of the seven churches in the Book of Revelation, it relates to the same word of exhortation he has for them. So, for example, Jesus introduces himself to Ephesus as the one who walks among the seven lampstands, later saying that if the people would repent would not repent, their lampstand would be removed. Church of Pergamum, Jesus introduced himself as the one who has the sharp double-edged sword, later saying to them, “Repent or else I’m going to come and I’m going to use the sword of my mouth against the people that are in error.” And to the church we’re looking at at Laodicea, Jesus introduces himself as the faithful and true witness. And Greg Beale notes that as Jesus refers to himself as the faithful and true witness, the content of the letter goes on to show that Jesus wants the people at Laodicea to stop compromising and emulate him so that they’ll be zealous and they’ll become faithful and true witnesses themselves. So, Beale writes these words, “With the image of Jesus as the faithful witness in mind, the Laodicean Christians are indicted for being generally ineffective in their faith. Their innocuous witness is the specific focus. It was ineffective either because it was nonexistent or because it was consistently compromised or they their participation in idolatrous facets of the Laodicean culture.” So, the letters to the churches in Revelation, they presume that the Christians are in the midst of difficult times, persecution, and struggle. Churches are variously commended because they persevered uh and endured hardship for Jesus’ name and they’ve been afflicted and they’ve been slandered. They’ve not renounced their faith even though they’re living in the very place where Satan has his throne. Those are wartime commendations that Jesus is bestowing despite needing to address some of the things some of the pathologies that are holding them back at the same time, things that require correction. When it comes to Laodicea, there’s no medals of com- of commendation being handed out. The Christians there, they appear to have dropped their witness. They’d taken their commission papers and they’d thrown them in a desk drawer somewhere and they’d forgotten about them. So again, we come to these shocking words, “I know your deeds, you’re neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other. So because you’re lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I’m about to spit you out of my mouth.” It’s astonishing to read that because it makes perfect sense to us prefer all Christians to be red hot, you know, to be fire on fire as witnesses for him. Doing evangelism, making disciples, baptizing and teaching new converts. Of course, Jesus would want every church to be on fire for him. But Jesus also strangely says, “I’d prefer it if you were ice cold compared to the way you are right now.” Now, what does that mean? You know, if you if you or I were tasked with working with a youth in a church or a community and half the kids were completely secular, they weren’t interested in Christianity, they were cold to the idea of Jesus, they didn’t have any belief in a supreme being, if that was the case, you’d at least know where you stood with those kids. With them, you’d try to do evangelism, you’d try to show them the beauty of the gospel and how the gospel explains reality and makes sense of life and relationships and sexuality and family. You could work with those kids. But if the other half of the kids were all raised in the church and they knew all the language and they looked totally bored and they snickered whenever you tried to teach them anything from the Bible, they acted like they’d heard it all before, they had you nothing new to say to them. They only came to the youth group to have some fun, to impress one another. Which group of kids would you rather work with? The ones that are cold or the ones that are lukewarm? Of course, you’d you’d prefer it if everyone was on fire for Christ, but if not, wouldn’t you rather spend your time with the ice cold ones and hope that they’d thaw out rather than the lukewarm ones who just acted like they’d heard everything before and they had nothing left to learn? You know, we all enjoy a piping hot coffee and we can enjoy an ice cap on a hot summer day, but no one ever wants to be served a temp- a tepid room temperature latte. That’s why Jesus says to the Laodicean Christians who had dropped their witness for him, that filed away their commission, he says he’d rather they were ice cold than half in half out. And Jesus feels so strongly about that, he doesn’t say he’s angry with them. He doesn’t say he’s furious with them for their lack of zeal. He says something actually far more visceral, actually worse. He says they turn his stomach, they make him nauseous. He gags on them. His first reaction is to spit them out of his mouth. Any one of us would probably prefer it if Jesus were angry with with us and maybe would reprove us, maybe yell at us if we needed it. We’d prefer that to him being nauseated by us, wouldn’t we? And notice something else here, you know, the Laodiceans, they hadn’t lost their faith. They hadn’t let go of sound Christian doctrine. There’s no indication of that. They hadn’t drifted into hypocrisy where they would say one thing and do another. They continued, presumably, to believe everything that they had believed. They’re not being criticized for not being orthodox. What they had dropped and what they’d let go of was their zeal. Few verses down, Jesus is going to tell them to be earnest and to recover their zeal, to get back to the place where the supreme passion of their heart, their love will be set on Jesus, not on the things they had transferred their zeal to. Jesus further spells out their pathologies as he diagnoses the very root of their problem. They’d dropped their witness, they’d dropped their disciple making, and they’d set their hope instead on wealth and on security. Jesus says, “You say I’m rich, I’ve acquired wealth, I don’t need a thing.” Their zeal had been transferred from their witness to wealth and security. They were living a civilian lifestyle when they should have been on a constant war footing. You know, the late Ralph Winter, he was an American Presbyterian missionary, he thought and he taught missions, and he made a helpful contrast between living with the luxuries of peacetime and living in a time of war. He wrote about the the great ship, the Queen Mary. He says, “It’s lying in repose in harbor at Long Beach, California, and it’s a fascinating museum of the past. Used both as a luxury liner in peacetime and a troop transport during the Second World War, its present status as a museum, the length of three football fields, offers a stunning contrast between the lifestyles appropriate in peace and war. On one side of the partition, you see the dining room reconstructed to depict the peacetime table setting that was appropriate to the wealthy patrons of high culture for whom this dazzling array of knives and forks and spoons held no mysteries. But he writes, “On the other side of the partition, the evidences of wartime austerities are in sharp contrast. One metal tray with indentations replaces 15 plates and saucers. Bunks, not just double, but eight tiers high to explain why the peacetime complement of 3,000 passengers gave way to 15,000 people aboard in wartime.” Says, “How repugnant to the peacetime masters this transformation must have been. To do it took a national emergency, of course. Survival of a nation depended on it. The essence of the Great Commission, and he lived for the Great Commission, he loved missions. The essence of the Great Commission today is that the survival of many millions of people depends on its fulfillment. So Ralph Winter would echo Jesus call that all Christians like us who want to obey the Great Commission and make disciples, we remain on a wartime footing. Jesus called out the Laodicean church for drowning their zeal for missions in luxury. They were living a civilian lifestyle during wartime. They believed in Jesus, he was their savior, they weren’t but they weren’t zealous for him. And and they weren’t fulfilling their calling to be disciple makers. As lukewarm people at some point they had stopped being electrified by the fact that Jesus loved them and had sacrificed for them and had saved them. That was no longer the controlling factor in their lives. They had ceased to see themselves as miracles of God’s grace. As a result Jesus told them they were blind to their own condition. They were in need of overcoming their new attachment to wealth and security. He said, “You say I’m rich, I’ve acquired wealth, do not need a thing, but you don’t realize in reality you’re wretched and pitiful and poor and blind and naked.” Now Jesus was being their doctor here. Though their condition repulsed them, made them nauseous having them in the examining room, he still patiently diagnosed their condition and like a good doctor, Jesus wrote out the prescription. He says, “I counsel you buy from me gold refined in the fire so that you can become rich, white clothes to wear so that you can cover your shameful nakedness, salve to put on your eyes so that you can see.” Now some of that’s very specific to the culture of Laodicea. It was a wealthy city when a an earthquake had devastated that region in 60 AD. They didn’t have to ask for emergency relief from Rome to rebuild their city, they just did it themselves. It had a great medical center and many doctors, a fine medical school, produced a lot of medicines including uh medicines for eye ailments. Le- Jesus was leaning into the culture of the city, calling out their dependence on wealth and security, and appealing to their need for medication. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire so you can become rich, white clothes to wear so you can cover your shameful nakedness, salve to put on your eyes so you can see. Now, before we look specifically at that medication of Jesus, let’s just ask ourselves honestly if we see a little bit of us and maybe a little bit of our church reflected in the words to the church at Laodicea. I mean, like them, we’re believers. We hold as best we can to right doctrine. We believe and trust in the gospel of grace. We’re not a bunch of obvious hypocrites who are saying one thing and doing another. Question is about our zeal. Is it sharp or is it dull? Is it possibly diluted by our Albertan wealth and security? How often do we even think about what it means to be faithful and true witnesses for Christ? Have we maybe set our commission aside and we’re no no longer guided and spurred by a passion to make disciples for Jesus Christ? Maybe we have a bit of a false view of ourselves or we’re doing okay, but Jesus might look at us and say, “Well, really, you’re a little more wretched and pitiful and poor and blind and naked than you think you are.” So, what’s the corporate temperature of our zeal? You know, the great civil rights leader, a martyr, Martin Luther King Jr., he once wrote a letter to his fellow clergymen from a Birmingham jail cell where he’d been placed after one of his uh civil arrests. And uh and uh they were they were always calling him, “Uh why do you have to put yourself in a place where you’re causing trouble? Why are you an outsider coming in and disturbing the peace? Can’t you find a better way to uh get your civil rights message across? And King wrote in answer to that, he said, “There was a time when the church was very powerful. In the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days, the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion, it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. He wrote, “Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being disturbers of the peace and outside agitators. But the Christians pressed in in the conviction that they were a colony of heaven called to obey God rather than man. Small in number, they were big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be intimidated. By their efforts and example, they brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide, killing of babies, and and the gladiatorial contests.” And then King said, “Things are different now. So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it’s an arch defender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s silent and often even vocal sanction of things as they are.” Then King wrote this, “But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today’s church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity. It’ll forfeit the loyalty of millions. It’ll be dismissed as an irrelevant social club no meaning for the 20th century. Every day, he says, “I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust.” Now, Martin Luther King Jr., he was correctly assessing what Christians in his time, they saw themselves as rich, as having acquired wealth, as have not needing a thing. They needed a fresh wake-up call to renew their zeal. And if we see ourselves in any measure reflected in the condition of Laodicea, if we suspect that Jesus might even be a little repulsed at our current lukewarm condition, even though we make might make him a little nauseated nauseated in the examining room, we need to be assured that Jesus comes as a kind and patient doctor, not to crush or condemn us. He comes to make us better. Key thing for us to to realize here is just to remain open to being broken down by his love. Cuz in verse 19, he assures them he’s not out to crush them, he’s not out to condemn them. He says to them, “Those whom I love, I rebuke and discipline. So, be earnest and repent.” Jesus their savior, he loves them, he loves us, he loves us enough to rebuke and discipline us when we need it. And his long-term plan for the Laodiceans and for us, stated in verse 21, “To him who overcomes, I’ll give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I overcame and sat with my father on his throne.” So, Jesus has a solution to give us that addresses every aspect of our lukewarm condition. He says he has a white robe for us. And that was only made possible because his own robe was taken away from him on Mount Calvary. And he says, “Our condition is one of being blind and naked.” But Jesus was literally stripped naked before being hung on the cross. And he was blindfolded and repeatedly told to prophesy who it was that hit him. He was impoverished, so we became rich. He set his great love on us to suffer and die for our sins, make a way for us to be with him and his heavenly Father forever. Because of that, it doesn’t make sense, if we think about it, for our zeal to slip. Our zeal for proclaiming the name of Jesus Christ and propagating fresh disciples for him. You know, more to the point, it gets pretty sharp here when we look at uh Revelation 3, and we might admit to ourselves this morning, we might sigh and say, “Well, Jesus, I think you’re right. My zeal for the Great Commission, for being a faithful witness, for making disciples, it might have slipped away from me more than I realize. I think maybe, Jesus, you and I should plan on getting together sometime. We can talk about this. Maybe I can begin to gradually get back on track.” And Jesus’ answer to that is, “Why wait? Why not right now? Let’s get together tonight. If you take a look at your Blink camera app, a doorbell app on your phone, you’ll see that I’m standing on your porch right now, as we speak. Let’s go get a meal right now. Just open the door.” That’s what Jesus says in verse 20 to those lukewarm Laodiceans. “Here I am. I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I’ll come in and eat with him, and he with me.” See, we could approach this whole business of the Great Commission and disciple making. We could sprinkle a little Laodicean guilt around the room, and we could condemn ourselves a little bit as lukewarm and wretched and pitiful and poor and blind and naked. And if we sprinkle a little guilt around, absorbed a little bit of that condemnation, then at least for a little while, we might be induced to step up our game and put in a little more effort when it comes to evangelism and making disciples. Although Jesus will continue to reprove and rebuke those he loves, I don’t think guilt is a great motivator long-term in ministry. I don’t think that a rebuke will very often stimulate a permanent transformation from lukewarmness to fiery zeal. Jesus, he’s unblinking and unsparing in his negative diagnosis of the condition of the Laodiceans, but when it comes to helping them heal, Jesus simply invites them to come and reattach themselves to him. That’s the key to being transformed as disciple makers. To reattach emotionally to Jesus, not to We don’t have to stand and endure a harsh lecture from him. He’ll reprove us. He’ll rebuke us. But he really wants to enjoy a leisurely meal with us and have intimate conversation with him. And we’ll talk more in the next few weeks about our attachment to Jesus and how that’s the key thing to motivating us when it comes to evangelism, to making disciples. And the key to both growing as a disciple of Jesus Christ and making more disciples for Jesus is always to be emotionally full of life with him. Attached to him, we’re not attached to him out of mere obligation and responsibility. We’re attached to him out of happiness and joy and mostly overwhelming gratitude for what he’s done for us. That’s our starting point for making the Great Commission fun and and resilient and and motivating for us in life. Jesus never intended for any zealous follower of him to be anything less than full of joy. So, that’s our starting point this morning and we’ll get into that the next few weeks, but I want to pray about a couple of things this morning. This is your personal time of prayer. You might want to confess to God any low zeal you feel in being a faithful witness and and making disciples. Might God knows it already. You might want to own up to some of that and then ask God to give you a renewed wartime posture. If you’ve become too civilian in the way you live life, ask him to renew a wartime posture and thank Jesus that he’s just waiting to enjoy deep fellowship with us as we open that door to him. This is your time of prayer, your time to just get some things right with God and pray some things to the Father and then I’ll continue by leading us in prayer after that.