We are living in an age where people have insensitive consciences and thin skin. Our forefathers, in sharp contrast, had sensitive consciences and thick skin. Now today if you disagree with someone, that can be taken immediately by them as a personal attack, as gaslighting, as diminishing what they are as a person. So you dare not disagree with them. 

But the Scripture addresses us as grown-ups. If there’s critique, if there is critique in Scripture, it is always to correct a fault, to redirect us from taking a fatal course and to bring us into fullness of life. I don’t know whether the people in Laodicea had thick or thin skin, but when Jesus speaks to the church of Laodicea, he offers a devastating censure. And at the same time, he offers them one of the most beautiful images of tender care to be found anywhere in Scripture. 

Well, a little thing about Laodicea. It’s typical really, when you preach on these seven letters, that you try to find out as much about the background of each of the cities. I find that actually irritating and unhelpful all together, but I’ll tell you a little bit about the background of Laodicea. It was a banking center, and as such was very wealthy. So wealthy was it that it was hit by two earthquakes one in the A.D. 60 the other in A.D. 61, and unlike all the other cities in the region, it did not need to apply for an imperial subsidy, or federal subsidy, we would say. It was a manufacturing hub that produced high quality textiles and carpets. And it was the seat of a flourishing medical school that was known especially for its ear ointment and eye salve. So there you are, that’s a little bit about Laodicea.  

But what we’re concerned about as we read the story here is the relationship of a church in Laodicea to Jesus. And we discover three things about Jesus, see aspects of Jesus in this letter that we need to focus on this morning. The first is what I’m calling the sublimity of Jesus. Obviously, sublimity comes from sublime, a term that refers to a greatness beyond all possibility of calculation, measurement, or imitation. The sublimity of Jesus.  

And we see that in his opening remarks as he introduces himself, he introduces himself to us as the Amen. This was a divine name. The God, Amen. The name comes from Isaiah 65 which in the Hebrew reads something like this – I won’t read the Hebrew but I’ll translate it – “For you he who blesses himself in the land will bless himself by the God, Amen; and he who takes an oath in the land shall swear by the God, Amen. In the ESV, it’s from the Greek “the God of truth.”  

Jesus, you remember, frequently used this word “amen”. You may not recognize it, but in passages where he says “Amen, amen” – lego amen, “Amen, amen, I say to you,” translated “Truly, truly I say to you,” or “Verily, verily, I say to you.” Jesus used this word “amen” frequently. You remember the great text in Second Corinthians chapter 1: 

“All the promises of God find their Yes in Jesus, and their Amen to the praise of God’s glory.” 

2 Corinthians 1:20

And what Paul is saying there is that everything God has promised, all that God has said, when Jesus arrived finds its conclusion, and finds its last word in Jesus who is the Amen to all that God has promised to do for us. In all of Jesus’ uses, usages of the word “amen,” it confirms words – words of command, words of warning, words of promise, words of prayer, words of praise to God. 

In worship, “amen” is a liturgical conclusion. And in these seven letters to the seven churches, the amen comes in this the last letter of the message to the seven churches. Jesus is the Amen. It comes from a Hebrew root meaning strength, stability, firmness. Everything the Laodiceans were not, Jesus is by nature as God. He is the God, amen. He is the God of amen. He is the God of truth. He is by nature steadfast, neither fickle nor capricious. He is by nature immutable, neither changeable or unreliable. He is the “amen” to all the divine promises and purposes. In Christ, all of the promises of God, from Abraham and the promise of a seed that would bring blessing to all the families of the world find their completion, fulfillment, their “amen” in the one the who is the Word of God made flesh, and who has kept the word of God to its final point. The Amen. 

Secondly, Christ identifies himself as the faithful and true witness. He is the one whose testimony never fails and never falls short of the truth. The expression itself comes from Psalm 89, where the Messiah is likened to the moon in the night sky. Listen to what it says:  

“His seed shall endure forever, his throne is the sun before me. It shall be established forever as the moon, and as a faithful witness in heaven.” 

Psalm 89:36-37

Now that little Psalm here is talking about Jesus. It’s talking about who he is, his throne as the sun, and then also as the moon that is a witness. What is the moon a witness to? I stepped out with Chloe the dog last night, and she had asked in her usual gracious manner to get out, and she was doing her stuff, and I was looking at the night sky. And there was a full moon last night, brilliantly in the sky, and I looked at the moon, and I was thinking of my sermon, of course, as preachers do, and I was thinking the moon in the sky tonight is a faithful witness to the existence of the sun. A faithful witness to the existence of the sun. Jesus in his humanity and his human nature was a faithful witness to his divine nature as the Son. And that’s the image that’s painted for us by that Psalm.  

In fact, that very same Psalm talks about Jesus as the firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth. It’s a Messianic Psalm. And this one is the Messiah; is the one who is a faithful and true witness of the divine revelation that has been given. It points us similarly, in a similar direction to the Amen. But whereas the Amen speaks, I think, primarily of his divinity, the faithful and true points us both to his divinity and his humanity, that is, to his human nature. Through his human nature to see in his life and death and resurrection, he shows us in a human fashion and in a human way what it means for God to be faithful and true. So we look at the life of Jesus, we look at his life of obedience, we look at the care he takes for people, the love he shows to men and women, we look at his faithful ways in which he keeps his promises and ministers to men and women at a human level, and even to the point of his death and resurrection. And we see in this human fashion the faithfulness and truthfulness of God reflected in Jesus’ humanity. 

And throughout his human experience, he bore faithful witness to God. By witness to God, I’m referring, of course, to his verbal witness to God and to the truth of God. It comes alongside his lived obedience to the commands of God. But his faithful witness to God involved him in speaking, in telling forth what God was, and indeed even bearing witness to himself as the Son of God.  

And it’s when you speak about God that you encounter resistance and arouse opposition. You know this for yourself. If you do nice things for people, if you are generous with your time and your money. If you’re kind and supportive of people. If you do the things that society expects you to do, like coming in and out of buildings with your mask on, which is a good thing to do, nonetheless they’ll like you for that. But don’t be deceived into thinking that that is you witnessing.  

The world will look on and the world will admire what you do, it will like what you do. It may even, it may even praise you for what you do, but you don’t witness until you open your mouth, and you speak to somebody about Jesus. And then you run up against the real spirit of the age. Then you run up against the fact, that Jesus himself experienced in his own life, I mean he went about doing good, he went about healing all manner of sicknesses and diseases, he fed the population, he did he raised the dead. He did all of these things. People admired these things; they went looking for him when they had somebody in the family sick so that he would heal them. They were quite prepared to follow him in the hope there would be another meal on a mountain somewhere, or in a plain somewhere.  

But when he spoke of himself, when he talked of his deity, when he talked about his need to go to the cross, they rejected him, they denied him, and they will deny his people. Christ is a faithful and true witness. And you and I are to speak up for Jesus, we are to speak out for Jesus, because Jesus’ witness on earth is now our business. Our core business to speak well of Christ, and of Christ and through Christ of God.  

Thirdly, Jesus introduces himself to us as the beginning of the creation of God. And we say creation here, I’m thinking here of his creative and re-creative priority, that is, he is before any of these actions – creation and recreation – that is, the new creation that he’s doing in our lives as we become new creations in Christ.  

The language here the beginning of the creation of God comes straight out of Proverbs chapter 8, verse 22 and 30. It’s wisdom that’s speaking, and I remind you that the Word and wisdom of God is the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the wisdom of God, and the power of God. And the pre-incarnate Lord is speaking here,  

“The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way, before any of his works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, before ever the earth was. Then I was by him, as one brought up with him, and I daily was his delight, rejoicing always before him.”  

Proverbs 8:22-23, 30

Here is Jesus speaking. This is Jesus speaking in the Old Testament in Proverbs. Here is Jesus telling us that he is the uncreated principal of creation, for whom from whom it took its origin. Not only is he the “amen” to God’s work, but he is the prelude to God’s work, and he is the worker of God’s work both in creation and in recreation. John the Apostle mines the depths of Proverbs 8 in his introduction to his own gospel. He says,  

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God.” 

John 1:1

Just as Proverbs says  

“I was with him as one brought up with him in eternity”, 

Proverbs 8:30

“He was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.” 

John 1:1-2

When Jesus calls himself the beginning of the creation of God, he is asserting his creative and recreative priority. And you know there’s a link between the church of Laodicea and the church in Colossae, because Paul wrote a letter to Colossae some years before John writes the book of Revelation. And in that letter he mentions Laodicea, and he asked that his letter to Colossae should be read to the church in Laodicea so they would put two and two together here and they would understand. This is what Paul was going on about when he said about Christ that  

“He is the image of the invisible God. That he is the sovereign Lord over all creation, for in him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible. All things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” 

Colossians 1:15-17

The beginning of the creation of God, and not only the creation but the recreation. There’s a direct link with Colossians here.  

“He is the image of the invisible God. He is the beginning the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.” 

Colossians 1:15, 18-19

There is nothing of God that does not dwell in Jesus. Now if Christ then is the beginning of creation and new creation, then he is all you or I will ever, ever need. All that we will ever need he has in himself. An excess of ability to meet every need of yours – the sublimity of Christ. 

And then secondly, the severity of Christ. The Amen, the head of the whole creation, who bears faithful witness to the realities of God in himself in creation and in the new creation, also bears faithful witness to the church. After all, Colossians said, “He is the head of the body, the church,” and they were familiar with that letter. As the head and Lord of the church, he superintends over it. He knows about this church; he knows its works.  

Apparently, there were no false teachers in Laodicea. There were, there was no evil prophetess trying to lure people after her, there was no deathly sickness, there was no violent persecution. “I know your works.” Jesus says. “I know that they are neither icy cold or boiling hot.” That is to say, there was a state, a state of total indifference in the church. There was no enthusiasm for Christ or Christianity in this church. The background of the language here is in ancient hospitality. If a guest turned up at your house, the host would offer them wine; if it was in the heat of the summer the wine would be cooled with snow kept underneath the house, or if it was cold outside then it would be warmed with the addition of some hot water. Hot or cold though were acceptable. Tepid would taste dreadful. The church at Laodicea offered Jesus lukewarm wine. Theirs was an indifferent offering indicative of their heart. Jesus says to them,  

“Would that you were either boiling hot or icy cold! But because you are lukewarm, and neither cold or hot I will spit you out of my mouth.” 

Revelation 3:15-16

Refusing Jesus was the great sin of Jesus’ generation; now here is a church effectively doing the same. They’re neither positively against him, but nor are they positively for him. The Apostle Paul writes to Romans tells them to be “fervent in spirit”. Or as Moffat puts it, “Maintain that spiritual glow in your life.” When Paul writes to Timothy he says, “Stir up into flame the gift of God that is in you.” But there was nothing of flame or fire or fervency in the church in Laodicea, it was just blah.  

Now Jesus is not recommending fanaticism here. What he’s recommending here is wholeheartedness. Wholeheartedness. A friend of mine who’s gone to glory, John Stott, who was minister in Central London for many years, I remember told of a conference on science, philosophy, and religion, that was once held at Princeton. And in the summary of the conference, there was this statement: “Commitment without reflection is fanaticism, but reflection without commitment is the paralysis of all action.” Enthusiasm is essential to vital Christianity. But they need Jesus to spell this out for them. So here’s Jesus’ diagnosis: 

“You say I am rich. I have prospered, I need nothing.” 

Revelation 3:17

“I say to you,” Jesus says, “You’re wretched, you are pitiable, you are poor, you are blind, you’re naked, you don’t see yourself as you really are.” If they put a survey out the congregation in Laodicea, they’d have given themselves top marks. On a session of one to ten where do you put your church? Extremely good! Number ten. They were full of themselves. They compared themselves to church down the road, and they thought, “Oh, we’re doing very well compared to that church down the road there. We are in need of nothing need of nothing.” Can a church or a Christian ever say they are in need of nothing? Jesus says, “You’re blind. You’re blind to what’s wrong. You’re blind to your spiritual condition.” Blind to the fact that you’re out of communion with Christ. The severity of Jesus.  

But lastly, I want you to notice the sufficiency of Jesus. The sufficiency of Jesus. He says to them and to us,  

“I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, so that you may be rich.”  

Revelation 3:18

“You think you’re rich because you have worldly wealth. I can make you spiritually rich.” Jesus says. And he urges them to buy from him. The language, by the way, comes from Isaiah, straight out of Isaiah chapter 55. 

“Come, everyone who is thirsty, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.” 

Isaiah 55:1

Jesus has opened up a market, he’s put down the goods on the table. He’s urging you to come buy something from him. You come to buy it from him, and you discover that he’s covered all the costs; and they’re yours. That’s the image. And what he’s doing is painting the picture of his sufficiency as opposed to their self-sufficiency. And he’s saying to them “Yours is a need so great that only I can meet that need. Only I can meet that need. Apart from me you can do nothing.” We are to find our sufficiency in Christ, who is our all. “Sufficiency in all things,” as the Apostle puts it. They’re naked, but Christ can clothe them. They’re spiritually poor, but Christ can give them true riches. They’re blind, but Christ has the ointment to enable them to see clearly. He can open their eyes, so they see spiritual realities as he sees them. He can cover their sin and their shame. He can give them life more abundant and free. Do you want this from Jesus? Life more abundant and free? And free. 

Sadly, here’s how it must happen sometimes: 

“Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline; so be zealous and repent.”  

Revelation 3:19

He’s saying to the church, “Don’t think because I’m talking to you like this that I don’t love you. Don’t think that because I’m stripping you down and demonstrating where you really are, don’t mistake my severity for lack of love. Don’t do that.”  

Here is the heavenly Bridegroom, you see. Here is the husband stating his love for his bride the church. It’s in his love that he summons the church to repentance. Reproof and chastisement are often a sign of Christ’s love for his church. He will never reject us, but he does want to draw us into a decisive act of repentance. And he says, “You have to be zealous. I want you; I want you to want repentance. I want you to be after repentance. I want you to be chasing after repentance.” He wants us to cultivate the kind of love that is spoken about in the Song of Solomon.  

“A love that is stronger than death, a love that is as jealous as the grave.” 

Song of Solomon 8:6

That’s the kind of passionate love, wholehearted love, that a lover has for his beloved.  

“Stronger than death, as jealous as the grave.”  

It’s passionate, it’s wholehearted. Jesus is calling his bride, and he’s offering her the means to look like the bride she is. He wants to give her the gold ornaments, the glistening robes, the anointed eyes that will make her appear to be what she really is inside as he sees her.  

The parallels between the language here and the Song of Solomon throughout Revelation recur again and again. And they’re certainly here. As the bridegroom calls his bride, his dove, his perfect one, whose anointed eyes “are like the pools of Heshbon” – which must have been a nice place obviously, or it wouldn’t have been a good romantic move to say that otherwise – but the pools of Hesbon. Who’s adorned with gold ornaments. And it’s at this point in the letter that Jesus gives this church to whom he has been so severe one of the most beautiful images in all the letters. 

“Those whom I love, I reprove and chasten; so be zealous and repent. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come into him and eat with him, and he with me.” 

Revelation 3:19-20

Can you believe this? Jesus is on the outside of his church. The language this illustration comes again from Song of Solomon chapter 5. The bride, the church, Israel, is telling us about an evening in her house.  

“I sleep, but my heart awakens; something in my heart wakes me up, and I hear the voice of my beloved that knocks. ‘Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled one.'” 

Song of Solomon 5:2

The Beloved, the Lord is at the door knocking; she’s inside, but she’s indifferent like the church in Laodicea. This is what she goes on to say, it’s hilarious: “I have put off my coat. Do I have to get up and put it back on again? I mean, I’ve washed my feet. If I get out of bed now, my feet will get dirty again.” And she stays where she is. And she hears in the background,  

“My beloved put his hand to the latch.” 

Song of Solomon 5:4

Was he going to come in or not?  

“But it was too late. My beloved had turned and gone. I sought him, but found him not.”  

Song of Solomon 6:7

That’s why Jesus begins by saying, 

“Those whom I love, I reprove.” 

Revelation 3:19

He’s coming to the church at Laodicea, as he comes to many churches. He finds a lack of enthusiasm. He finds people are indifferent to him. The lite church was not really warm towards Jesus. Do you know he can leave? He can go, he can leave us on our own for a while.  

Does Jesus ever leave his church alone for a while? Ultimately, no. But sometimes he removes the joys of his presence. He takes away the things that make coming to church good for us, takes them away for a while. It becomes routine, it becomes a boring thing, a difficult thing. We wonder why it is. Why is, why is there no sense of God at work? Well, because when he was here, when he was trying to get our attention, we weren’t listening. But still he comes back again; he’s coming, knocking on the door of the churches, stooping to our weakness. 

“If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.” 

Revelation 3:20

This mention of coming in and eating supper with him makes us think of the Last Supper, that Jesus we’re told earnestly desired to eat with his disciples before he suffered. That sacrament of the Supper, with its bread and wine, with its fellowship and with the real presence of Jesus as our heavenly host. But that supper is always shedding light for us on Jesus’ second coming, his Parousia, when he returns again.  

“You do show forth the Lord’s death till he come.”  

1 Corinthians 11:26

For when he comes, there will be the marriage supper of the Lamb. The marriage we were made for will begin. And later on in Revelation we read about this great celebration.  

“Let us rejoice and exult and give him glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and the bride has made herself ready; it was granted to her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure – for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.”  

Revelation 19:7-8

A royal wedding, a royal feast, and a royal status.  

“He who conquers, I will grant him to sit with me on my throne, as I myself conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne.”  

Revelation 3:21

Did you notice this? He and his bride sitting on the same throne. Psalm 45 comes to mind. There’s the picture that painted in Psalm 45, where the heavenly Bridegroom, who is the Messiah and is the Lord God, brings his bride by his side. And there the marriage of the bride and the groom – the heavenly bride and Bridegroom — is established. And that will happen when Jesus returns again. 

And already, do you notice this? Because in heaven, heavens, and eternity there’s no tomorrow, no yesterday, no before, no after – it’s all established – Paul can write to the churches and again say that already “we are in the heavenly places, seated with Christ, seated with him right now in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” 

Right now. Jesus promised his disciples,  

“As my Father appointed a kingdom for me, so I do appoint for you that you shall eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones.” 

Luke 22:29-30

“If we endure, we shall also reign with him.”  

2 Timothy 2;12

And this is why he puts us, puts the church through the fire, so that the metal might come through intact. As Peter puts it:  

“So that the genuineness of your faith – more precious than gold which though perishable is tested by fire – may redound to praise and honor and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ. 

1 Peter 1:7

If any church or individual gives heed to the call of Christ and opens the door, Christ will enter. Christ will share with such a one the fellowship of intimate communion in that endless feast of love, of which the sacrament of the supper is the guarantee and promise. And will also share in Christ’s throne. That is, we’ll share in the glory and powers of Christ’s own resurrected, enthroned, and triumphant humanity. We talked about one mediator earlier in the service. The mediator is the God-man. As man, Jesus achieved this throne, this throne that he shares with us by his death and resurrection and ascension. 

We begin to co-reign with Christ in our human nature as creatures, alongside him in his human nature. A human nature, by the way, now glorified, that we will be glorified, and we will be like him. But he’s also, he is also God. And so he distinguishes between the throne that he now currently sits on as our mediator – that is, as the man Christ Jesus, that he will share with us, the sphere of reign that he will share with us – and his position as God. His Father’s throne, which is his by virtue of his being God of God. Of God saying,  

“The LORD saying to my Lord ‘Sit at my right hand.'” 

Psalm 110:1

That was the throne that he never left, by the way. The incarnation did not affect that reign. He continued to reign there. In fact, the Lord says to him in Psalm 110: 

“Sit at my right hand, till I make your enemies your footstool.”  

Psalm 110:1

In other words, stay here while it all happens down there. In his human nature he’s making, causing our salvation to take place, but as God he reigns over all of that from his throne as God. The absolute sufficiency of Jesus Christ as our Savior and Lord.  

I don’t know what you brought with you to church today. I don’t know what emptiness deep within, I don’t know what anxiety, what fear. I don’t know what questions. But I do know this – there is an all sufficiency in Christ for you. If you turn to him, if you look to him, if you fill your mind with thoughts of him, if you turn away from the things that preoccupy us here in this passing world racing to corruption, if you turn away from those things to him, you will find him to be your all sufficiency in all things, for time and for eternity.