Messages to the Church Revealed (Laodicea) ...

The last church to receive a revelation of the nature of Christ and a special message from the author of Christianity was to be Laodicea.  Historically the city of Laodicea was along a major trade route in the Roman Empire and was one of only a few cities declared to be a “free” city by the Roman Emperor.  The wealth of its residents was so great that even after an earthquake had destroyed the city, the residents declined imperial funding and rebuilt the city themselves with their own means.  Traveling merchants were common visitors to the region and the residents seem to have amassed a good degree of wealth trading with them on a regular basis.  The city had a thriving medical school, and enough means to have an interest in the arts.  Paul mentions the church at Laodicea in his writings to the Colossians, and even a letter he had for them which appears to be lost in antiquity.  So perhaps the church of Laodicea was thought to be the jewel of the Christian church, located in a place of commerce where wealth would offer means to fund the ministry throughout the world.  Sound familiar?

Jesus begins His message through John in Revelations chapter 3 and verse 14 saying … “And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write; These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God;”  He begins his message with a reference to the end of all things, “the Amen”.  The end of our salvation is to be Jesus Christ alone.  He begins by reminding us that all things are asked in His name.  Our final state will be determined by what we ask for from Jesus Christ.  He proceeds to identify Himself as “the faithful and true witness”.  The Word of God can only be properly understood by the faithful and true witness to it, Jesus Christ.  The Word, absent Christ, can never be fully comprehended or understood.  The life of Christ shows us the depth of love and care of the Father.  It was a living example of what His Word was to reveal to us.  When Christ is removed from scripture, false interpretations are possible, as was the case with the Pharisees who reasoned it was “work” to show love and healing to those in need on the Sabbath day.  The author of Love did not see it this way and so began their quest to eliminate these radical ideas brought by the Messiah Himself.  But the witness remained faithful and true in the form of Jesus Christ.

Lastly, Christ identifies Himself was being “the beginning of the creation of God”.  Strange that the sequence begins with the ending of all things, followed by the middle, and concludes with our Genesis.  But how relevant to the church of today, that the revelation we need most of Jesus Christ, is one of being our Creator.  How many a modern believer has succumbed to the ideas of evolution, relegating the story of our Genesis to mere allegory, without scientific fact.  How many forsake the idea of our God having the power to create, and worse, the power to re-create by His sheer will and command.  This central tenet tears at the fabric of our very salvation, for if we are to be remade, it must be by the power of a God who is able to create and re-create in the first place.  If all our God did was offer a spark of life that evolved dinosaurs into primates into man, then what hope do we have, that is He is able to will us into the creations He intended us to be.  Our enemy attacks our origins because he understands this very well.  Satan wishes no finer achievement than to eliminate the hope of re-creation out of the capabilities of our God.  So he attacks the ideas of the story of our Genesis, followed by a full assault on the literality and accuracy of the Bible itself, to which Jesus Christ is the faithful and true witness.  The war our enemy wages is to cause us to set aside the Bible as accurate, and the idea that our God is our creator.  Should he win, he robs us of hope, and the only way to see our salvation fulfilled.  So to the Laodiceans, and to us, Christ reminds us, and reveals to us, that He is the Amen, the faithful and true witness, and the beginning of the creation of God.

The revelation continues in verse 15 … “I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. [verse 16] So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.”  Again Christ reveals that He has an active knowledge of the goings on in the church belonging to Him in Laodicea.  And His assessment is that this church is neither dead nor alive in Him, but somewhere in the middle; in mediocrity.  The condition is not hopeless, but it is far from where He intended the church to be.  His preference would have been to be either cold, or hot.  It is the state of mediocrity that appears to cause Him to want to spue us out of His mouth.  He explains the reason behind this state of the church in verse 17 … “Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked:”  Ouch.  There it is.  The reason behind our condition is that commerce has blinded us to our true spiritual state.

We, like the Laodiceans who preceded us, live in a vibrant free economy.  We trade, and conduct commerce, and have a higher standard of living in this world than in any that preceded us.  We have the most modern medicine.  We have the ability for leisure and an interest in the arts.  We are made rich by our trading with merchants from around the world.  We mint our own currency and trade it for low cost imports for the value added skills and innovations we bring to the world.  In so doing, our employment makes us see ourselves as wealthy and in need of nothing.  And we carry this attitude into the church; for we are rich with the printed word of God at our disposal.  The availability of the Bible has never been so prevalent as it is today.  It is printed in nearly every language, in multiple versions, accessible online, and taught in a wide variety of denominations each with a particular view on how it is to be interpreted.  Our latest gospel of success, teaches us that the favor of God is available to us in this world, in this life, through the acquisition of material blessings, God is longing to give us.  In short, we have determined to serve both God and our lifestyle of success.  We labor for our “survival” and define the term according to our means.  We then also “go to church” and attempt to “serve God” as we are able, allowing for the fact that we must work in order to eat and fund the ministry.  We consider ourselves the jewel of the Christian church, able to fund with our means, the ministry that must be spread into all the world before He returns.

But this is not the reality in which our God sees us.  He reveals to us that our true state is one that begins with wretchedness.  Our modern medicine has not prevented our degeneration, nor has our modern Christian teachings prevented us from becoming truly wretched before our God.  We have too often abandoned the salvation of Jesus Christ that begins with our full submission and dependence on Him alone, with a trust in ourselves and our will power, and our Biblical knowledge and doctrines.  We have determined to partner with God to enact our salvation, doing our best first, and trusting Him to make up the difference.  We believe our own actions must happen “ahead” of the transformation He offers.  We believe our salvation depends first upon us, and is only made up for, by Christ who bridges the difference in our self-made-holiness and our God.  In so doing we turn ourselves away from His Holy Spirit and real reform, choosing to continue wrestling with our sins, and our desires to sin.  In this we have become wretched creatures completely unaware of our true state of being.

We fail to see that we are miserable in this state of constantly fighting within ourselves the losing battle of wanting to sin all the time.  Our lives are spent in misery and guilt over what our hands find to do, in spite of the knowledge they should not.  We struggle and lose against sin over and over again, knowing we should not sin, yet choosing to do so, again and again.  We have no joy in our Christianity, for we are not living the life of freedom, but still stuck in the mire of what we know we should be doing.  This state of misery is made worse for us, because we have not the time to see it corrected.  We must get back to work, in order to “survive”.  Our American dream is founded in the idea that we can pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps, work hard, and reap the rewards of success.  We bring these ideas into the church and believe if we but work harder on ourselves, we will become better people.  But like the alcoholic that remains an alcoholic all of his life, we reject the fundamental healing Christ would bring to us.  We reject His longing to see the desire for sin itself, removed from who we are.  So we remain in misery and deceive ourselves as to our true condition.

We are in fact, poor, blind, and naked.  Our spiritual condition is one of poverty, not one of riches He so longs to give us.  We are blind, in that we do not see what it is like to love others like He loves them.  We are naked in that we do not have His robe of righteousness to cover us, instead trying to knit leaves from our garden to hide our shame, and failings.  We stand naked before our God, because we have refused to take up His covering.  We want our own.  We continue to approach God trying to wear righteousness of our own making, instead of accepting His for ourselves.  We continue to try to reform our actions with an unreformed heart and we fail miserably at it.  But to compound our error, we are blind to our failures.  We hold fast to the ideas of partnering with God, and so offer Him a measure of dependence, but not enough as to see us completely changed.  For while we hold on to the ideas of self-reliance, we hold on to our wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked state.  We deceive ourselves that our financial success is mirrored in our spiritual lives.  It is not.  Our money no more makes us pure, than does our determination to see ourselves made pure.  Only Christ can make us pure, only Christ can change who we have become.

The remedy begins in verse 18 for our state … “I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see.”  Christ likens Himself to a traveling merchant who frequents the city of Laodicea.  He counsels us to buy of Him the commerce that alone is important.  We are to acquire “gold tried in the fire”, or gold that has been made pure by the fire of affliction and trials.  Pure gold is gold without other contaminants.  The gold or currency Christ offers is not mixed with a desire for wealth in this world, but for wealth in the life He offers.  His currency is faith that transforms how we love others.  To be rich is not to be found in the acquisition of partial impurity, but in the pure service of love to others, made possible by a faith that He will re-create us to be who we are supposed to become, instead of who we are.  The white raiment He offers is to give us His righteousness instead of our own.  It is not bridging the difference between our best intentions and actions and our God that He offers, it is the full distance.  As we have no righteousness of our own, He offers us His instead.  Our victories will never be our own, they will be His wrought within us.  We can ONLY be clothed, if we accept His clothing to cover our shame.  Lastly, He offers us eyesalve to anoint our eyes to see truth.  He does not wish us to remain blind to our condition whether as it is, or as it should be.  We are offered His Spirit to bring to life the Word of God within us.  We are offered an end to our self-deception, and our self-reliance, and to be made free by our Creator.  Our eyes are to be opened to the truth of Jesus Christ, this is the beginning of wisdom.  Our reliance on self has kept us blind, but as we rely on Him for our salvation, we begin to see clearly what it means to love others and not ourselves.

As with the six revelations to the churches that preceded Laodicea, the message and intent of our God is ever to see us redeemed and saved.  He again reiterates the reason for His admonitions in verse 19 … “As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent.”  Christ does not reveal the truth of our condition to see us wander into depression.  This by contrast is a message of hope.  It is His so great love for us, that He reminds us, it is the motivation for the hard news of our true spiritual state.  We may endure His rebuke, because it comes with love and with a means of our salvation.  We are to be zealous and repent.  Zealous not in ourselves and in our own strength, as that has just been revealed to be of no value.  We are to be zealous in our submission and dependence on God.  It leaves us free from the burden of judgment, allowing us to live in the joy of loving others.  We do not need to purge others of sin, but instead are free to love them while God enacts the reforms they need in their hearts, and does so likewise with us.  Our repentance deserves our zealous attention.  We cannot repent for others, but we can repent for ourselves.  Thus is the basis for His ministry revealed, we are to love others, and repent for ourselves.

Christ again likens Himself to a traveling merchant visiting the city of Laodicea in verse 20 … “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.”  This reveals to us, that Christ does not take a passive stance in the work of our salvation.  He is not sitting in His house, waiting for us to find Him.  Instead He is standing right outside the door of our home, knocking to try to get in.  We must open the door, but need go no further to find Him, for He is right there waiting.  He does not kick down our door (despite times when I wish he would).  It is left to us to open it, or ignore it.  The door of our hearts is not much different than the door of our homes.  While Christ remains outside of our home and our hearts, the inside remains unchanged, unaltered, and struggling between what we know to be right, and what we want and do.  This is the condition He proposes to change.  He proposes to bring into harmony our desires with what is right.  He proposes to change what we want, from the inside out, and therefore what we do.  He proposes a level of intimacy with us.  He wishes to eat with us, and we with Him.  We receive of Him the gifts of pure gold or love made pure by faith.  He proposes to offer us His purity in exchange for our corruption, His white raiment for the shame of our nakedness.  He proposes to have us see the truth of who He is, instead of remaining blind to who we are.  And He is actively pursuing us, for no other reason that He loves us just that much.

Then, as if all the previous promises were not enough, the gifts again just begin to boggle the mind as in verse 21 we find … “To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne.”  What must be overcome then?  The desire to serve our lifestyle of success while trying to serve God, the belief in ourselves that we may partner with God to see ourselves saved, the idea that we can craft our own righteousness instead of just accepting His;  all these things must be overcome the same way in which Christ overcame.   Christ was victorious because He ever submitted His own will fully to that of His Father.  Christ did not trust His own humanity or strength, but instead trusted fully the Love of His Father to see Him through this world.  We are to overcome by no other means.  We are to trust to Christ, that He will reform who we have become.  We are to trust to Christ, that He will offer us His gold of love made pure by faith in Him.  That He will clothe us with His righteousness and white raiment.  That He will anoint our eyes that we may see the truth of who He is and stay focused only on Him.  This reliance alone on something outside of ourselves is the same method He used, and the only method that will work for us.  There are no alternatives.  If we are to be saved from ourselves, it will be Christ alone who saves us.

Upon allowing that salvation to take place, we are to be granted the privilege of entering His home, and sitting down at His throne with Him, just as He did with His own Father.  No longer is He standing outside the door of our pitiful homes asking to gain entry to see us saved.  Instead we are brought to His home, to be invited to go into His very throne room, and have a seat with our God of the universe, and of love itself.  This is an elevation for us that we do not deserve.  But then, nothing of our salvation is something we deserve, it is ALL a gift.  We are to see and sit near the very throne of Christ Himself.  For me, I would be happy to curl up under His seat and find the blissful sleep of a child at rest.  It is enough to know you are near Him, and are so safe in His presence.  But it is not merely rest He offers, He offers fellowship, interaction, and a continued intimacy with us we have yet to begin to understand.  Even the very throne of God is not to be restricted from us, we are to be able to enter that room and fellowship with Christ because of the gift and promise He offers to us.  Nothing is withheld from a love so great for each of us.

The final revelation to the church of Christ is concluded in verse 22 … “He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.”  The Holy Spirit once again joins in the message to us and to the churches in the day of John.  The final time period to which Laodicea belongs is not clear, other than to believe it is the final time period before His returning to us.  Its beginning is unclear, perhaps in the mid 1800’s, but its ending is marked by His return to take us home.  However, the condition our church finds itself in today; is much like the characteristics that marked the church of Laodicea in its time.  We are affluent.  We have modern medicine.  We have the luxury of an interest in the arts.  The conditions that plagued Laodicea plague us today.  It is not our affluence, or medicine, or interest in the arts that is our enemy.  It is our belief that these luxuries somehow make us spiritually ready and spiritually wealthy.  Only a reliance on Christ can do that.  Only He offers us true wealth.  Only He offers us real healing.  Only He can reveal to us the truth of who He is, philosophies and ideologies based in Him exceed any found in the art of our day.  It is Christ alone who remains our hope and our salvation.  This was the common theme throughout all the messages to each of the churches that composed His perfect church.  His admonitions, exhortations, and promises remain all centered on our redemption.  Despite our state, none is without hope, or beyond the reach of His redemption.  We need but accept what He so longs to give us, and we see His salvation re-created in who we are, and who we are to become.

This concluded the first revelations to the church of Jesus Christ in book John relayed.

 

Physical Expression ...

While procreation is the natural result of physical intimacy between married couples, this was not the sole purpose for the creation of this function. The ability to bring each other joy in a way that fosters deep levels of intimacy and vulnerability and reminds us of the union which our Lord wishes to become one with us, is the primary intent of sexual expression. We were not created in order that we have sex. Rather, sex was created to make our existence and our ability to serve another in a special tri-union with God unique and special. Physical expression was designed to take us beyond the normal boundaries of unity and literally illustrate two bodies becoming one; thus the text referring to … “two becoming one flesh”.

Timing and location of our physical intimacy are two key factors in keeping romance alive and well. When the will is submitted to Christ love grows over time, satisfaction grows over time, things do not become dull, but they become invigorated. Before children become part of the equation, there is much more time available for a couple’s intimacy than afterwards. This opportunity should not be lost on things of a far lesser concern like the logistical concerns of maintaining a house, work that could be postponed, or entertainment that can be delayed. Placing proper priority on each other first, and insuring all needs are met within the relationship is important. Physical sexual expression need not always be intercourse to be rewarding, but should not be ignored in favor of lesser things either. The most important factor is to keep the goal of finding pleasure in pleasing your mate. Try not to be distracted by less important things that would subvert your goal and weaken your relationship.

After children enter a family the time available for two to become one is substantially reduced from pure logistics. Often tired parents worn out from a long day at work, and then further exhausted from efforts at home, leave both craving sleep more than contact. To avoid falling into a routine of this nature that never seems to change, it is good to take effort to schedule a break. Get a sitter, a mother-in-law, or whoever you need to and schedule a weekly date-night for your spouse. Take active steps to schedule a break in the routine. Do not let the normal demands of children, home, and work overcome a key need in the marital relationship. This takes effort and prioritization to accomplish, it will almost never “just happen”. But it is worth the effort you put forth, and it will again demonstrate to your partner that you care about their emotional needs as much as the physical and spiritual.

Sabbath becomes a most important factor in maintaining a growing marriage. It is the one day when the third part of our union is physically remembered, honored, and included in our activities. Physical intimacy is far more likely on Sabbath as time is in far more supply. Ignoring the normal demands of maintaining the home, or working, or commercial concerns frees one up to pursue what has real meaning in our lives. Physical intimacy is NOT about having one’s own pleasure, it is about creating pleasure for our mate. It is about service, not self-gratification, and as such is a wonderful way to spend Sabbath hours. On Sabbath in particular God can be brought into the mind and conversations. Talking about the source of all love tends to lead to demonstrations of love between two people. This can extend to all members of the family, but it is important to insure mom-and-dad take private time away to nurture the tri-union properly.

Satan uses every tool at his disposal to keep us focused on the wrong things, and our priorities out of whack with what would benefit us. It is easy for a parent to adopt a priority of children first, spouse second, others last. This sounds reasonable, especially as the children are younger. But in truth, the family is weakened by this kind of prioritization. A loving parent will always tend to defer priority to the needs of the children first, but that does not negate the needs of their partner. It is important not to lose focus on insuring a partner’s needs are met even though the demands of dependent children can seem overwhelming. It does not take much time to offer a caring word, alleviate a mundane task by doing it yourself, or perhaps just a quick and simple gesture of affection. When your partner knows they have not been abandoned even for those you share a common blood bond with, it makes the strength of the unions stronger, and enables both to help the children even more than originally thought.

What the mind focuses on during physical expression is important as well. Couples who have been married for a while often resort to fantasy role playing, or mental fantasizing to “keep things new”. But focusing the mind outside of your partner during physical expression is tantamount to adultery and betrayal. It does not ennoble the mind, or help you love your partner more. It has the opposite effect. It is easy for the mind to become dependent on these kinds of mental distractions in order to maintain arousal. The reason for this is that self once again becomes the centerpiece of sexual experience, rather than service. If you suffer from a history of this kind of thinking, transition from focusing on other people, to focusing on other locations. Picture your spouse in exotic locales or faraway places, keeping the mental distraction focused on your partner while creating fantasy only in the circumstances.

This is where location is also important in physical expression. Finding inventive places for physical expression can help you create memories that occupy the mind well into your future. The younger you are, the more adventurous you will tend to be in picking locations and perhaps risking exposure over privacy. But finding each other in nature can be very compelling if you can find a secluded enough location. Different cities, different geographies, even friend’s homes can provide memories to last for a lifetime. Special clothing can enhance the experience, a favorite night gown, or under clothing, can often create memories as well. Being creative can occur through a number of ways. Appreciating youth while you have it makes sense, developing creativity can and should occur at every age.

Intimacy does require a degree of privacy. Unneeded risks should be avoided. It is incredibly unwise to risk children who are nowhere near ready to encounter physical intimacy to accidently stumble across it. It is also illegal to conduct sexual activity in public places, even in your own car (unless it is parked in your closed garage at the time). Location matters, but should not precede common sense.

The biggest difficulty couples face today is the history of lies we have been fed to believe. Romance, physical interest, and stimulation need not decline over time with same partner. This happens when both parties drift away from the source of all love. The reason we need Christ in our marriages is to keep us renewed, refreshed and resilient to face what life brings us. We find peace in the togetherness. We find comfort in spite of adversity, because there is love that lives between us. The strength of our union’s from the Garden of Eden until today has not diminished. It is more than our bodies that meld together over time. Our desires begin to merge, our hobbies, interests, and entertainment choices begin to align over time. Even the most opposite individuals who have entered a marriage can find common ground that grows over time when Christ remains at their center. We must unlearn what we have learned [G. Lucas]. It is time to be led again. It is time to be recreated again. It is time we took the focus off of self in our marriages and placed it back on the Author of love. It is time we looked first to Christ and submitted our wills to Him to discover an entirely new world of possibilities in our marriages, as it should have been all along.

Stop the Pain ...

It is nearly impossible to appreciate truth when suffering excruciating pain. Our lives are full of it. And sadly, most of the pain we endure is primarily due to the decisions we make ourselves. The irony of self interest, is that the more we try to serve only ourselves, the more we make ourselves miserable. But to stop this downward cyclone of horror we must first recognize the truth about evil, and our relationship with it.

God is love. He is omnipotent and pure. He is only comprised of everything that is good. He is life, love, and joy. So it stands to reason that anything that is not God is also not good. Any deviation away from the source of life, leads to death. Any deviation from the source of joy, leads to misery. This was the knowledge of good and of evil that Lucifer discovered when he stopped looking to serve others and began to serve only himself. It was not murder that comprised the first sin in our universe. It was not sexual immorality, or theft. It was something far more insidious, it was internal, it was pride. It was a deviation away from God’s perfect order of service into the horribly destructive world of self interest. Serving self is at the center of everything we have to come know about evil.

Because of the history of our world according to our Bible, man gave up his dominion over himself and planet earth to Satan. In breaking trust with God, we gave up our ability to have control even over ourselves. In short, we were bound by sin and evil. Our nature is to act in the perseverance of self, and further in our own self interest. Evolutionist’s call this survival of the fittest, yet these are the acts behind every horror history has to offer. It is not acts of love and sacrifices for others that mark the hallmarks of atrocity in our world; it is rather acts of naked aggression, of insatiable lust, of quests for more and more power over our fellow man. All these traits share self-interest in the core of their motivation.

Each act of self interest however carries with it a degree of consequence and pain. The consequences and pain may not be felt immediately, however the longer they are delayed, the more severe they usually are when they inevitably are realized. Getting lung cancer from smoking cigarettes is not a punishment from God, it is simply cause and effect, fill your lungs up with enough tar, and you get cancer. Cancer hurts. Cancer spreads. Cancer kills. And the pain of cancer is not restricted, whether we are talking physically inside the body of its carrier, or emotionally to the entire circle of friends and family who share the pain of the afflicted, and his/her loss. Evil is much like cancer. It seems inconsequential at first. It might come wrapped in a pretty package and even feel good in the short term. But underneath is death incarnate, underneath is pain on a stick, underneath is cancer just waiting to spread and make life a living torture factory for you and everyone you know or care about.

So why on earth would any logical thinking human being choose to participate in evil, knowing the outcome is what it is? Are we clinically deranged, do we all have a death wish, are we at heart masochists - perhaps. More likely, we are all just a bunch of junkies. We are literally addicted to our self destructive behaviors. Those that believe they can stop when they want to, never seem to find the time to actually make that decision. We are as we have always been, bound to our evil, slave to it, addicted in every way that matters. It is the only logical explanation to an illogical set of facts. We know we should not choose to do it again, but we do anyway, over and over and over again. Christians take their sins to the cross and ask forgiveness, but even though forgiven, they seldom cease from the behavior that requires them to go back to the cross again and again.

And thus pain runs rampant in our lives. We hurt ourselves. We hurt our victims. We hurt those who care about our victims. We hurt those who care about us. We make a ripple of pain in the pond of our world, and the ripples carry with intensity for a long way. So what hope does a slave have in light of the overwhelming evidence of our slavery? What hope does the addict have, when at rock bottom they finally realize their own condition of helplessness? We need outside help. We need a savior. And fortunately for our desperate need, God has provided just what was needed to break this horrific cycle of doom.

We will discuss later the process of how being saved from evil works, but for purposes of this discussion the fact that there is a way to end the pain is the significant point. Most of the pain we feel in our lives is due to the decisions we make. Sometimes it is due to the decisions others make but this is far less the case. The reason why we are the major supplier of pain to ourselves, is that our very nature and very addiction cause us to make poor decisions, repeatedly, and often. This condition must end, if our minds are ever to see truth. This condition must end for us to be able to rest. This condition must end, if the world around us is ever going to be changed for the better. This is the final battle. It is the battle for our souls, for our selves, and for our very nature. It will be fought in the mirror. And it will be won or lost depending on who we choose to align with in the coming fray.