I am very glad to be able to be with you this morning and to share from the Word of God.
I want to read to you a very well-known passage in the Apocalypse: Revelation 3:14.
And to the angel of the church in Laodicea write:
These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God:
I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot.
So because thou art lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spew thee out of My mouth.
Because thou sayest, I am rich, and have gotten riches, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art the wretched one and miserable and poor and blind and naked:
I counsel thee to buy of Me gold refined by fire, that thou mayest become rich; and white garments, that thou mayest clothe thyself, and that the shame of thy nakedness be not made manifest; and eyesalve to anoint thine eyes, that thou mayest see.
As many as I love, I reprove and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent.
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.
He that overcometh, I will give to him to sit down with Me in My throne, as I also overcame, and sat down with My Father in His throne.
He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches.
Could we have a word of prayer?
Beloved Lord, we are so thankful that we are found in Your presence this morning. We thank You for the time we have had together, as we have thought of You and praised You for all that You have done for us on the cross.
Lord, we praise You and worship You for Yourself. Now we come to Your Word. Dear Lord, we need the Holy Spirit to be with us, both for the speaking and for our hearing.
To that end, we praise You for the anointing which our Lord Jesus won for us through His finished work on Calvary, and has made available to us in the person of the Holy Spirit. Into that anointing power and grace, we stand now by faith.
Dear Lord, take the weakness of the vessel and let Your flame of fire burn. Take, we pray, all of us, and speak to our hearts.
Lord, we are living in Laodicean days. We are living in days of judgment beginning upon the nation—and upon this nation. And Lord, we need You. In a way, we have always needed You, but we need You even more as we enter into these days of turmoil, conflict, and distress.
Hear our prayer, then, in the name of our Lord Jesus the Messiah. Hear our prayer, and gloriously answer it. We ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
Beloved brothers and sisters, this passage is well known to you. I do not want you to think that I am trying to bash you, sort of whacking you over the head, as it were, with the Word of God.
But some dear sister in California, apparently searching through my website, found some message which attracted her. Now, I do not know her age or anything really about her, but she was attracted by the title, “Middle-Aged Spread.”
I do not know what she thought she would get out of the message, but she began to hear it, and it turned her life and the life of her family upside down. Then she wrote to Shirley, I believe, and asked if Shirley would mind if she made a transcript of it.
Shirley said that she should ask me. So she sent me the transcript and asked if it was possible to publish it. When I read it, I was shocked. I never thought that I ever had the boldness to say what I said.
One of the things I was asked was, “When did you give this message?” I realized that it was sixty years ago, at the very beginning of the Halford House story.
Then I began to understand. I was young, very undiplomatic, not at all gentle and sensitive in the way I said things. I could not believe that I had said what I said. Of course, there was nothing wrong in it. It was simply truth unvarnished, and not in any way made helpful to the listeners.
Now I am a good deal older. I am not sure I am more diplomatic.
I told the dear sister, “You can publish it.” She said, “This describes the American church scene exactly.”
Now, with the years that have passed, I noticed something that I never noticed sixty years ago. I noticed how the Lord summed up the whole thing:
Behold, I stand at the door, and knock.
If any man—not, “You hypocrite group of you,” but any one of you—
hear My voice, and open the door, I will come in to him,
and will sup with him, and he with Me.
Suddenly, I realized that is the key to the whole message to Laodicea. You see, very often it is taken as an evangelistic verse, you know, just to preach to the unsaved. Jesus is outside, your door is closed, open the door. Jesus will come in and will be life and power and salvation.
All of which is right. But as a result, we tend to think that that verse has very little to do with the rest of the message. In fact, it is the key to the message.
You see, the Lord Jesus called Himself, to this Laodicean church, “the Amen.”
In other words, amen in Hebrew comes from the root aman. In Hebrew, we say ma’amin, which means, “I believe.” Amen, amen means, “Let it be. I believe that. I have faith.”
It is something that means the end. Do you remember how the apostle Paul wrote in his second letter, “How many soever be the promises of God, in the Messiah, in Christ, is yes; and through Him is the amen, unto the glory of God”?
In other words, you find that the promise is yes in the Lord Jesus, but the amen is when it is performed in you, when it becomes reality in your circumstances. It is always through Him. It is yes in Him, and amen through Him. There is a process. Initially, you stand on a promise; then there is a process; and then comes the fulfilment.
He began this rather shocking message to the Laodiceans with the words, “To anyone who has an ear to hear: I am the Amen.”
Even in a Laodicean situation, Jesus is still the Amen to the purpose of God for the church. He is the Amen to the Word of God in its realization in us. Amen.
Then He said, “I am the faithful and true witness.” They did not realize in Laodicea, but they were unfaithful—faithless. They thought they had it all, but in actual fact they were unfaithful to the Lord. They had lost their first love. They had lost their passion for the Lord.
They were no longer the faithful ones holding the testimony of Jesus. But it made no difference to the Lord Jesus. He is still the faithful and true witness.
Then He said, “The beginning of the creation of God”—the new man, the new heavens and the new earth, the New Jerusalem. Everything to do with the Lord Jesus is to do with newness.
The problem with Laodicea is probably that they had picked up a whole number of things along the way. They had a routine. They had an organization that was probably good. They had a methodology. They had ritual and ceremony. They had baptism and the Lord’s table.
They had it all. It did not really matter whether the Lord was there or not.
That is the Laodicean church. It does not matter whether the Lord is present or not. They use His name. They praise His name. They pray in His name. They study His Word. And He is outside.
I do not want to upset you this morning, as good Americans, but the American church is very much like this, by and large.
Of course, people read this message and say, “Well, this is the traditional church. This is the institutional church. This is not us. We are evangelical.”
But this church was made up of born-again believers. It was a true New Testament expression of the church. They had everything. They had their meetings. They had the Lord’s table. They had their Bible studies. They had their evangelistic outreach. They had everything. They probably had very good teaching.
But somehow or other, they had substituted a methodology for a living relationship with the Lord Jesus.
They had the steps.
I remember years ago, in Singapore, when the Spirit of God was moving all over Southeast Asia. People were being saved, delivered; miracles happened. But the folk were as green as green could be.
I remember after you spoke, people came forward. I remember one case of a young man who was obviously demon-possessed. The brothers did not know what to do. They just gathered around and said, “Lord, show us what to do.”
Then one of them said, “I believe we should do so-and-so,” and they all agreed, and they did it, and he was delivered.
A year or two later, a brother from the States came with two jumbo jets. One jumbo was filled with prophets, and another jumbo was filled with miracle workers, healers, and so on. They had seminars for a whole weekend.
And suddenly, everything died. They got a methodology: the four steps to deliverance, the five steps to salvation, the three steps to holiness, or whatever else.
Isn’t it interesting? This living church—at least in their estimation—with its whole life, its meetings, Jesus was nowhere to be found in it.
Born-again believers can be so deluded that they believe Jesus is there when He is not there. He is outside knocking, and in the most plaintive words that Jesus spoke in the New Testament, He said, “If any man hear My voice.”
Their estimate of themselves and the Lord’s estimate of them were one million miles apart. They said they were rich, they had gotten riches, and they had need of nothing.
Now, Laodicea was one of the wealthiest cities in Asia Minor. Its whole wealth came from wool—black wool—which was woven in a special way, and was something everyone wanted all over the Roman and Hellenic world. They were physically affluent.
But I do not think, when the church said, “I am rich, and have gotten riches, and have need of nothing,” that it was physical wealth they were thinking about. They really believed they had everything. They believed that they had seen the deep mysteries of God, that they understood the purpose of God, that they believed in the Word of God in its entirety.
There were no liberals among them, at least as far as we can see. The Lord never said, “Some of you do not even believe this or that or the other.”
But the Lord’s estimate of them was that He called them “the wretched one.” Could the Lord speak of born-again believers, a company of born-again believers, as wretched—the wretched one?
Then He went on: miserable. What a description of an evangelical, born-again church.
Then He said, “Blind.” “Naked.” Is He speaking about believers? Yes. All those believers, so deluded, so deceived, that they believe they have riches, that they have become wealthy, that they are marvellously clothed, that they see the mysteries of God and the purpose of God—and still the Lord says, “It is not real. There is no reality.”
How interesting it is that our dear Lord said:
Behold, I stand at the door, and knock—outside.
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.
The problem with Laodicea is that they had fallen out of fellowship with the Lord Jesus, and they did not know it.
This is the thing that was not in the message I gave sixty years ago. Now I see it. The key to this whole situation was living fellowship—on every level: leaders, elders, those with ministry, right through the whole company. The key was living fellowship.
Here in the West—not always, so do not get me wrong on this, but so often—a meal is just a means to live. We eat to live.
Whereas in Asia, Africa, and certainly in the old days in Israel, a meal was a time of fellowship.
That is why, when you see some modern versions, you will read, “I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me.” Or another version says, “I will come in to him, and will eat with him, and he with Me.” Because a meal in the Bible is a symbol of fellowship.
Do you remember when God, with two angels, visited Abraham and Sarah? They had no idea it was the Lord. Abraham, I think, did realize that they were angels. Then they had a meal—a very unkosher one, because yogurt was mixed up with the meat.
Then the Lord sat down with Abraham, you remember? It was a meal, as if God longed for fellowship.
Why do you think the Lord visited the Garden of Eden every day with Adam and Eve? It was a longing for fellowship. He wanted to sit with them. Did they eat? We do not know. I imagine they did have to eat. I mean, they were not in that blessed place in eternity; they were in this particular period of history.
But everywhere you look—do you remember when the Lord Jesus rose from the dead? Do you remember how He walked with the two to Emmaus? They had no idea who He was until they asked Him, “Do not go further. Come in and have a meal.”
He came in, and when He broke the bread—which is the key—as He broke the bread, they suddenly saw it was Jesus.
Do you remember when the Lord appeared again to them in that room? He said, “Have you any broiled fish? Have you anything to eat?” Well, it is a very strange thing for the Lord to say. Why did He need something to eat?
And they said, “We have a little bit of broiled fish.” “That will do,” He said. “Let us eat it together.” Yes, broiled fish.
Do you remember that in Galilee, when the Lord said to them to put their nets out, and they brought Him the fish, He cooked them? He grilled the fish on the seashore.
Out of that fellowship came those wonderful words to Peter: “Do you love Me more than these?” Three times the Lord said it.
Dear folks, this matter of fellowship is essential—foundational.
The problem with us is that we fall out of fellowship with the Lord Jesus. Somewhere along the line, Laodicea was so thrilled with their teachings, so thrilled with their initial experience of salvation, that they fell out of fellowship.
Then it was methodology, routine, ritual.
Beloved brothers and sisters, I do not want to upset you. You are good Americans, and I imagine, for the most part, patriotic Americans. But the American church, by and large, is a whole matter of getting something off the ground.
We get a methodology. We get a routine. We build an organization. And the danger is that it can run on whether the Lord is there or not.
You can have fitted carpets from wall to wall. You can have a magnificent choir. You can have ministers of education, ministers of youth, ministers of age, ministers of theology—all kinds of ministers.
And the Lord is a stranger.
You remember, I think it was A. T. Pierson who had a dream. He dreamt that, in the church of which he was pastor, a stranger appeared in the packed church. But he said he could not take his eyes off him.
All the time he was preaching, he looked at this man, and then went on with his preaching, and then thought, “I wonder what he is thinking about this?” And he would look back again.
The man vanished, so he was unable to shake his hand.
Then the Lord spoke to A. T. Pierson and said, “I was at your church.”
And then A. T. Pierson said, “Nobody knew it. Nobody knew that You were in the church. And if I had known, I would have preached a very different message.”
Laodicean. You are very clever in this country in business—at least you have been up to the present time—very clever in the ways you have built businesses which are now worldwide, and the machinery that goes with it, and the whole thing. But that is what has happened to the church.
What is the key? How wonderfully the Lord speaks to this church, of which He is outside.
He says, “As many as I love, I reprove and chasten. Be zealous. Get out of that lukewarmness. Be zealous. Let a passion fill you to repent.”
Now, I go back to what I said sixty years ago unashamedly, actually. But I must say I was a bit shocking in the way I put it. I said, “Can you believe that the Lord could ever say of a company of born-again believers, ‘You make Me sick’?”
This is the Lord we sing about. We pray in His name. We study His Word. And He says, “You make Me sick.” The actual Greek is dreadful: “You make Me vomit.”
My version puts it so beautifully: “I will spew you out of My mouth.” Your modern versions say, “I will spit you out of My mouth.” But just think for a moment. Let it come home to you. It is as if the Lord is saying, “I have got nausea over you. I am sick to the eyeballs, and the only way I can get this thing out of Me is to vomit.”
What a dreadful thing for the Lord to say to a company of born-again believers.
And yet, the promise is this: if there is a passion within us to turn to the Lord, to repent, then the promise comes:
If any man open the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me.
The greatest single need for believers is to have a living, ongoing, continuous experience of the Lord.
Then every trial, every tribulation—of which we have many—will only force you nearer to Him, will only bring you into deeper experiences of Him.
I have told you the story. Years ago, I was convalescing in Lady Ogle’s home in the south of England because I had been ill. She had said, “Well, as soon as you are not infectious, come and convalesce in my home.”
And I did. I very much enjoyed everything about that time. But I remember looking up on the wall, and I saw this little text on a piece of wood:
My peace I give unto you.
And I thought to myself, “What a trite little saying to put up on the wall. ‘My peace I give unto you.’”
Then, in some way, the matter came up. Well, I never said to her, “That is a very trite thing to put up on the wall.” I was not that rude. But she began to tell me an experience she had.
She said—I think it was over her husband’s death—she was only twenty-three. They had only been married for three or four years, and he died in the great flu epidemic after the First World War. She was in absolute agony of spirit, did not know what to do, where to turn, or what the way ahead was.
And she said, suddenly into her heart came the words:
Peace I leave with you.
My peace I give unto you.
She said, “In a flash, I suddenly realized that the peace He left, He never needed. It was peace for sins forgiven. It was the peace of having your sins washed away, blotted out, forgiven—being justified, because He became our sin, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”
“But when He said, ‘My peace I give unto you,’ it was the peace He had in Gethsemane, when He was in an agony and said, ‘Nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou wilt.’”
“And then the same peace on the cross, after He cried out, ‘My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?’ He said not only, ‘It is finished,’ but, ‘Into Thy hands I commend My spirit’—in peace.”
“That peace,” she said, “He said, ‘That is My peace. I experienced it. I will give it to you.’”
Now, that trite little piece of wood had a whole history behind it. The Word of God had come into her life and become hers. It had become flesh and blood in her own experience. You can never take that away. That is forever.
That is fellowship: to be able to walk with the Lord, to be able to follow Him, to hear His voice, and to follow Him.
Now, some people say, “Oh, I am sick to death of these people who all the time say, ‘The Lord said this, and the Lord said that.’” Well, there are people who have got balmy ideas. We have to recognize that. They are overboard.
But the fact of the matter is, Jesus said, “My sheep hear My voice.” In every single believer, there is an organism. It is a spiritual organism. It is in your spirit, not your soul nor your body. It is in your spirit. And that receiver, that spiritual receiver, picks up the voice of the Lord.
If the Lord Jesus said, “My sheep hear My voice,” He obviously means it.
Now here is the key to this hard word of the Lord to Laodicea. He said to them, “I will come in to him and will sup with him, and he with Me.”
What went wrong with Laodicea? Just that kind of fellowship.
Now He says, “I counsel thee to buy of Me gold refined by fire.” But how can we buy gold when everything to do with the Lord Jesus is God’s unspeakable gift to us?
The only way is by experience. It is a frequent cost. But for there to be gold in your being—eternal gold—you have to go through deep experiences. Are you ready?
When you go through those experiences, you come out the other end with real gold: the gold of His life, the gold of His nature. It is in you forever.
Fellowship—you see, this word fellowship in Greek, koinonia, really speaks of having something in common. Well, do we have anything in common with the Lord Jesus? No. But in the most wonderful way, He puts something into us. Then there is something in common.
He puts into us the gold of His own life and nature. So salvation is through His finished work, but the price is experience. And sometimes that experience is unbelievably costly.
And He goes on and says, “You are naked—wretched, poor, miserable, blind, and naked.” What a catalogue for a living church—a good evangelical church, a church of born-again believers.
I say, if any Christian leader said this today, they would howl him down. “You cannot say things like that to those who are born of the Spirit of God.” But the Lord Jesus did.
He said, “You need white garments to clothe you.” That is the finished work of the Lord Jesus. That is justification—not your righteousness, but His righteousness.
And eyesalve, that you might see. It is one thing to know doctrine; it is another thing to see spiritually what it means.
Why do you think—I have said it before, and I must be careful that I am not just boring you with what I have said at times—but I have a wonderful Jewish imagination. I imagine everything.
I think of the letter to the Ephesians, and I see the apostle Paul dictating to this poor secretary, this poor amanuensis. He is saying, “Now, let us start here,” you see. Then out of him come phrase after phrase after phrase that are mind-blowing.
No one has ever fully plumbed the depth of the meaning of these incredible things that the apostle Paul wrote. Then he stops for a while, and he says to the amanuensis, to the secretary, “Just wait. Do you think we should tell them what we are praying?”
And the secretary says, “I do. I think you should. I think it would be very good for them to know exactly what you were praying. Otherwise, all this marvellous material that you have given by the Spirit of God will become stuff for theological seminars. It will become material for sermons.”
And then the apostle says, “Right. Put this down. We are praying the God and Father of our Lord Jesus the Messiah, that He would grant to you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of the Messiah, the eyes of your heart being illumined.”
That you might know—not know about—what is the hope of your calling,
what are the glorious riches of His inheritance in the saints,
and what is the exceeding greatness of His power to us-ward who believe.
Well, that changes everything, does it not? It means you have got to have eyesalve. It is not just an academic thing, not just studying up the truth. You have got to see. It is when you see something that you are changed.
Isn’t it true? How did you get saved? Only when you saw that Jesus was your Saviour. Then it happened. How did you come into something more of the Lord? Again and again, when you saw.
Well, folks, I think that is it for this morning, after having shocked you all. But the thing is, basically—let me just say this last thing, and I am not getting at you, please.
Do you think it would be possible that a company such as this could get into such a place that the Lord was outside, knocking at the door?
Well, if you are asking me this question, I will answer it. If we look at church history, there is not a single initiative that Jesus launched by the Spirit of God that, in the fourth, fifth, or sixth generation, did not go off the rails.
Look at church history. Everywhere you turn, you will see the beginning passion, experience, fellowship with the Lord, fellowship with one another.
Within—sometimes by the second generation, third generation—it has become a methodology, a routine, an organization. In some cases, it lasted even a hundred years. I think of the Moravians, and I think also of the Brethren.
But so very little has lasted in the history of the church. Why? Because somewhere, somehow, we fell out of fellowship.
May the Lord speak to your heart, because if the enemy could work something to destroy all the values of the years of experience and of teaching, he will do it.
May He find us faithful. And may He kindle in our spirits that flame of love for Him.
Thank you.