That Book in your lap/Let Me in

This morning we looked at that well known and loved passage in the second epistle to Timothy chapter 3 and verses 16 through 17.

My message was entitled 'That Book in your lap' subtitled, 'What Satan doesn't want you to know about the Bible'.

There were essentially 7 points that were gleaned from the text namely: 1. All Scripture is all Scripture. 2. All Scripture is God breathed. 3. All Scripture is authoritative. 4. All Scripture is profitable. 5. All Scripture is accessible. 6. All Scripture is perfect. 7. All Scripture is sufficient.

We ‘landed’ with reference to the 15th verse which highlights the fact that Christ is the Word of God become flesh and that 'all Scripture' is either about Him in a forward looking sense or, from the New Covenant's perspective, looking back to the historical person and work of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The challenge was for us to not take for granted ‘that Book in our laps’ but to marvel, and that ever increasingly so, at the grace and love of God in graciously giving us His holy Word!

The evening's message was preached from Revelation 3:14-22.

As a title, 'The Letter to the Pastor of the Church in Laodicea', subtitled, 'Let Me in'.

The gist being that this church, and they were His church in spite of their failing to be all they could and should have been, had come to the point of slowly but surely excommunicating Christ from their fellowship and that due to their economic ‘wealth’ and pseudo ‘success’ causing within them a degree of independence. Their great sin was that they were sinfully self-sufficient and so had no need of Christ really, at least in their evident, albeit unbeknown to them, estimation of it.

He is found outside the church, as it were, knocking. This has nothing to do with the gospel, as in evangelizing the lost (that silly painting!), but everything to do with restoring fellowship with Himself, and that within the context of a wayward backslidden church...His true ‘lampstand’/church nonetheless.

The 'lukewarm' aspect is to be seen not as ‘straddling the line’ or being a half-hearted ‘fence-sitter’, as it were, but as being outright useless and distasteful and so ineffective as light bearers due to their ‘power source’ – Christ Himself – being ‘side-lined’ to the ‘outer courts’.

The hot medicinal springs of Hierapolis were of great value to those who were sick, the cold refreshing drinking water of Colossae was a real source of joy to weary travellers, but the lukewarm, nauseating water (if you could even call it that) of Laodicea was enough to make one vomit on tasting it!

Hence the hot and cold are both of value, contextually speaking, and do good...the lukewarm - no value!

It is, I firmly believe, a grave mistake to take the text to mean that Christ would rather we were complete pagans, as His church, than that we were ‘iffy’, ‘middle of the road’ saints. This is untrue, in and of itself, and not what this particular congregation would have understood.

So the matter is clear...we are to repent of all and any self-sufficiency and let Jesus back into our own lives personally and our church corporately. Not in a salvific sense but in a fellowship/communal sense!

He is ‘the Amen’. (The firm One… trustworthy and true throughout) He is ‘the faithful and true Witness’. (The One who always and only did according to the will of God in obeying His commission - the Laodiceans has lost the plot and were unfaithful and unhelpful either to the sick or weary!) And He is the omnipotent Creator of all things, able to enable those who abide in Him!

Their own assessment of themselves was sorely flawed...Christ lovingly yet firmly sets the record straight diagnosing their plight and proscribing the cure...namely, Himself!

The challenge to us as a church family is to 'let Him in' and that as, not the humble carpenter of Nazareth, in His humiliation that is...but as He has already revealed Himself in that glorious vision of Revelation chapter 1. He is conquering constantly and we are to render Him homage and reverent worship and honour!

The long and short of it...the daily bread from the sacred Volume amounts to this: Take up and read...read of Christ and rejoice in His absolute sufficiency. And, with that, return to an awareness of your wretchedness and acknowledge your acute and, chronically so, need of Him.

No compromise ever!!!

Soli Deo Gloria forever!!!