Alliance Witness, 1969.05.14, P. 3-5.

LET ME BEGIN by asking two questions.

First, who is speaking in these letters? They are called “The Lord’s Letters,” and therefore it is the Lord who is speaking. But Revelation 2:7 says, “He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.” Who is speaking, then, the Lord or the Holy Spirit?

Both. On the one hand we have the Lord’s words, objective truth. On the other we have the voice of the Holy Spirit in the application of that truth.

The second question is, To whom were these letters addressed? seven churches? Yes, but they were addressed to the churches through the “angels” or messengers of the seven churches. There is a personal nature about these letters. Every messenger was both to receive and to pass on the message.

Failure is a tragic word in the task of carrying out God’s plan of salvation for the human race. As we study the failures of the seven churches we are reminded of our own shortcomings. We are humiliated before God. We cry out for mercy.

The Lord deplored situations found in most of the seven churches. Let us deplore what the Lord deplored. The Lord was dealing with real issues here.

The word “repent” is used eight times in these letters and we cannot turn a deaf ear. At a most critical time in the history of Israel, Daniel wept, fasted and confessed before God the sins and failures of his people. God heard his prayer and revealed His plan. At a turning point in the history of the Chosen People, Nehemiah wept and mourned and fasted and confessed the sins and failures of Israel. God heard his prayer and moved mightily to bring His people back to their fatherland.

No one can deny the fact that we are standing at a crossroads in the history of the church. Perils and challenges dwarf everything in the past. Maybe we need more weeping and repentance and confession. We can hear these messages from the Lord much better if we are in a repentant frame of mind and heart.

What were the failures of the seven churches?

First was indifference-the sin of nonaction. The Lord said to the Laodicean church, “Thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot.” Lukewarmness is a spiritual condition in which neither the emotion nor the will is affected by conviction. No action or urgency is involved. No stirring of the heart, no tears, no emotion, no excitement, no compassion, no commitment, no adventure-nothing outside the comfortable armchair of tradition. Lukewarmness and indifference are essentially the same. Indifference always avoids involvement, commitment and cost.

In what contrast was the Lord Jesus Christ. He is called the “Amen, the faithful and true witness.” He was absolutely honest about His saving mission, so much so that He gave His life. He witnessed even unto death. How different the Laodiceans! Nonaction is the worst form of denial. By inaction we deny what we believe.

The real difficulty with the Laodiceans was that they were not 100 percent indifferent. They had some concern and involvement and they were satisfied. Our problem today is not with utter indifference. That would be easier to solve. Our real problem is the ease with which we engage in the supremely urgent task of evangelism.

While men and women are perishing without the gospel we seek no new and more effective methods of evangelism. While opportunities are fleeting away we adapt ourselves only slowly to new situations of fruitfulness. An indifferent person does not care whether many or few people are saved.

There is a popular concept in evangelical circles that needs re-examination. We often say, “We leave everything with the Lord after we have done our duty; we do not worry about the results.” This notion is deep-rooted and it has its justification, but it is one-sided. Weaknesses in our human nature cause us to use it as an excuse, with the result that we no longer aim for success at any cost.

No businessman takes that attitude. He does not say, “I shall open my shop on time and people may come in and buy whatever is here. I have done my duty and I won’t worry whether I make money or not.” On the contrary, he feels there is no limit to what he should do to make money. He is never satisfied without making money because he is never indifferent to money.

The Lord prayed in John 17:4, “I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.” This is the Lord’s good example for us.

A second failure of the Asian churches was their orthodoxy without life-the tragedy of an unfulfilled name. “Unto the angel of the church in Sardis write; …I know thy works, that thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead…I have not found thy works perfect before God” (Rev. 3: 1-2).

The church in Sardis had a name of being alive, but in reality it was dead. Alive in the estimation of man, it was dead in the sight of God. In all probability the Sardis church carried on many activities, had an efficient organization, regular services, fluent prayers.

Visitors may be impressed by all the outward manifestations of your church, but God is impressed only by the reality beneath the surface. Only the inner life can satisfy Him. Only those outward activities which are tangible pulses of invisible spirituality interest God. Jesus comes to the fig tree for fruit, not leaves. “Leaves only” are tragic words.

The form of godliness without power is dead, worship without spirit and truth is dead, giving without love is dead, program without the Holy Spirit is dead, oratory without unction is dead, the letter without the Spirit is dead, and a name without reality is dead. Concern and compassion for the unsaved are sure signs of spiritual life. A church preoccupied with regularities but without an evangelistic outreach is just as surely numbered among the dead.

The word “perfect” in Revelation 3:2 can he translated “fulfilled.” The verse means that their works were not fulfilled in the sight of God. In a word, the church in Sardis had an unfulfilled name.

I have discovered that many Chinese who learn English mix up the words “evangelical” and “evangelistic.” I think it is a good mistake. When we stop being evangelistic we stop being truly evangelical. If we keep the name of evangelical and do not evangelize, we have an unfulfilled name. We take pride in the name “evangelical,” but may God help us to live up to our name! Orthodoxy without life is a great tragedy.

The third failure concerned an alliance with error-intellectual apostasy. Part of the Christians in the churches at Pergamos and Thyatira had associated themselves with customs and practices connected with pagan worship. Prostitution, fornication and impure gaieties were associated with temple worship in that part of the ancient world. Satan was behind these evils, wielding his power through superstitions and moral corruptions to enslave people.

Under the pressure of religious persecution and the seduction of licensed lusts, some clever and carnal minded leaders in those two churches devised a new scheme of religious philosophy. In order to justify and facilitate their participation in temple festivals, they tried to persuade Christians to think that they could take part in pagan practices without really harming their Christian life. These theories must have had an intellectual appeal because they were called “deep things.” But the Lord says that they were prompted by Satan. He calls them “the deep things of Satan” (ASV).

These religious theories in the Pergamos and Thyatira churches must have had strong points in order to be persuasive. In all probability they had intellectual appeal, the support of current secular philosophy and some reasonable religious facade to gain the approval of the more serious Christians. Satan knows when to make concessions and how to bar- gain. In the same way Jezebel persuaded the people of Israel to join in Baal worship. Today it would be called religious syncretism, and we must guard against it carefully.

Under the guise of scholarship theological errors are creeping into Christian churches. They are supported by popular secular forms of thought, militate against Biblical authority and undermine basic doc- trines of historic Christianity. These theories may contain some real value, but we must not be blind to the more important hidden issues basic to our Christian faith.

A fourth failure of the churches was complacency-the luck of spiritual vision. The Christians at Laodicea were not only indifferent; they were complacent. The Laodicean church said, “I am rich… and have need of nothing.”

Complacency is involuntary, and to cure it we must remove the causes. The Lord says their complacency came from a lack of spiritual vision. “Thou art…blind,” He said. “1 counsel thee to buy of me…eye-salve to anoint thine eyes, that thou mayest see” (ASV). The Greek word translated “blind” includes also the idea of shortsightedness. Lack of vision causes complacency.

Our attitudes and feelings are largely determined by the direction in which we look. When we look at the people inside the church we may feel good. “There is a big crowd in my church. We have a good-sized congregation. We have done quite well-as a matter of fact, very well.” But if we look at the masses outside the church we realize how little we have done and how much still needs to be done. All complacency is gone; our hearts become heavy.

It has been said that in the United States it takes six clergymen and one thousand laymen to win one person in one year’s time. That is the rate of church growth. In Asia, Christians comprise, on the average, just one percent of the population. The job of evangelism is simply not being done. We fall prostrate before God, plead for mercy and strength and rise with a new dedication to evangelize. An internal revival in the church is absolutely needed for an effective evangelistic outreach.

There was a fifth failure. It was a preoccupation with the material a secularized church. Its thinking was basically materialistic. It evaluated everything by material standards. The Lord wanted to restore the divine perspectives.

The Lord’s message for the Laodicean church throws important light on our predominantly materialistic age. Christian theology has been greatly influenced by secular theories which have led some church leaders in the direction of a social and materialistic interpretation of the gospel. We concur that human life is a combination of body and soul, that the needs of the body should be taken care of, that social ills which adversely affect man’s morality need to be cured, that verbal witness alone is not enough. All of these are scriptural concepts.

But the basic problem is one of priority. The Great Commission is still the supreme mandate for all Christians. Our primary concern is still the restoration of man to fellow- ship with God through Jesus Christ the Son. Personal conversion is still the main task of the church.

There was yet a sixth failure: the loss of first love-diminishing dynamic power. The Ephesian church had lost its first love for the Lord.

There are two interpretations of “first love.” One places emphasis on time. It understands “first love” to be the love that the Ephesian church had during its early history. The other interpretation places emphasis on quality. It understands “first love” to be the best love which the Ephesian church had for the Lord. I think both are true with the Ephesian church. Their first love in time was the best love in quality.

First love is selfless love; first love is sacrificial love; first love is fellowship love; first love is pure love; first love is enjoyable love. Miss Margaret Clarkson interprets the Saviour’s commission so well:

So send I you to labor unrewarded,
To serve unpaid, unloved, unsought, unknown.
To bear rebuke, to suffer scorn and scoffing-
So send I you to toil for Me alone.

So send I you to bind the bruised and broken

O’er wand’ring souls to work, to weep, to wake,

To bear the burdens of a world aweary-

So send I you to suffer for My sake.

So send I you to loneliness and longing, With heart ahung’ring for the loved and known,
Forsaking home and kindred, friend

and dear one-
So send I you to know My love

alone.*

All this is impossible without first love. the dynamic power in sacrificial evangelism. The loss of first love necessarily results in diminishing dynamic power. It slows down evangelistic efforts.

In judgment the Lord removed the Ephesian candlestick. The church lost its privilege of shining for the Lord. For the Pergamos and Thyatira churches judgment was a direct cause-and-effect retribution: the bed of adultery would be a couch of illness.

The failures of Christian churches have often become their own curses. Many of the troubles and trials that churches have gone through are their own handiwork. Their misdoings have turned out to be their own undoings. God is not mocked. We reap what we sow.

The judgment of the Lord came to the Laodicean church in the form of chastisement. It was a sign of His love: “As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten” (3: 19). Let Christian churches today be sensitive to the loving chastisement of the lord and “repent” and “be zealous.”