“I know your works:you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.” Revelation 3:15-16
The Lord continues His words to the church at Laodicea. He has stated their condition – impurity has stained the very essence of the church’s message. The Lord now tells the church His reaction to their state.
Because you are lukewarm and neither hot nor cold The
Lord gives the a assessment of the message that the Laodicean
church is proclaiming to the city around it. It is tepid. The church at
Laodicea has watered done the truth of the gospel, the holiness of God, the evil of mankind’s sin, and the love and mercy of God shown at the cross that they are making no impact on the unsaved. No one feels the need to be saved.
This is not a new message or warning. Isaiah stated “Cry loudly, do not holdback; Raise your voice like a trumpet, And declare to My people their transgression. And to the house of Jacob their sins.” Ezekiel specified very clearly the role of the watchman. “But if the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet, so that the people are not warned, and the sword comes and takes any one of them, that person is taken away in his iniquity, but his blood I will require at the watchman’s hand.”
Yet the message of the church in Laodicea is not clear. It is described in I Corinthians 14, “For if the trumpet makes an uncertain sound, who will prepare for battle?”
I will spit you out of my mouth The Lord make a stunning statement to this church. He tells them they make Him sick. The Greek word for spit is properly vomit, repulsion, showing utter rejection, desiring total separation or rejecting with extreme disgust. This church’s behavior causes the Lord to want to spew them out of His mouth.
There is another famous passage in scripture where vomiting occurs. The prophet Jonah is sent by God to Nineveh but does not want to go. He does not want to see the Ninevites saved, he has no concern or compassion for their souls. As a result he runs from God. God will not allow His servant to shirk his duty so He sends trouble to his life. He is caught in a storm, finally confesses his sin to the sailors and God, is thrown overboard to save the lives of the crew and swallowed by a great fish. After three humid, smelly, acid stained days in the fish’s belly, God has Him vomited onto the land so that he can go to Nineveh. What was the sin that caused Jonah to run, God to send His discipline and the great fish to vomit him out? The unwillingness to present the pure gospel of Christ.
Lets take the Lord’s message to the Laodiceans one step further. In Luke 9 the Lord says, “For whoever is ashamed of Me and My
words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when He comes in His glory, and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels”. The Lord speaks these words in the context of denying oneself, taking up one’s cross and following Christ. Then the Lord says, “For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and is himself destroyed or lost?” This is the sin in the Laodicean church. They want what the world has. They are ashamed of the words of the Lord. They want the love of the world. Instead of calling the world to repentance they allow the impurities of the world to enter the church. Theos message is no longer the cross of Christ but tolerance and compromise. The Lord looks at the message this church proclaims and it makes Him want to throw up. What will the Bema Seat be like for this church if they do not heed the Lord’s words?