(Previous –> Houston, We Have a Problem – Part 1)
At Ease in Zion
Most everyone has probably heard the familiar expression “no pain, no gain.” It’s a succinct acknowledgment of the fact that gain of any kind doesn’t come without sacrifice. Sports usually comes to mind when you hear this phrase, and we tend to envision athletes in training who push themselves during the off-season in order to come back better, faster, and stronger next year. They want to be at their best, so they endure the rigors of training in the expectation that their efforts will ultimately help them to achieve their goals.
In similar fashion, we are told that pain is an integral part of our spiritual growth, because it is through difficulties and trials that our faith grows and develops. This is why James tells us to be encouraged during times of testing, because God is helping us to strengthen our “spiritual muscles,” so to speak:
Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing. James 1:2-4
So when you think about the Laodicean church in light of this principle, you start to understand why they had issues. Their material comfort—“no pain”—had translated into spiritual complacency, such that their faith had stagnated and their zeal for God was gone—hence, “no gain.” As a result, God was simply putting them on notice that things were about to change, either by their repentance or through His discipline, because He was ready to supply some “pain” in order to bring about the “gain.”
It’s a pretty consistent message throughout Scripture, because neither the problem of complacency nor God’s approach to dealing with it is peculiar to the Laodiceans. On the contrary, we see this condition manifested throughout Israel’s history and it is clearly something that has never been pleasing to God:
Woe to you who are at ease in Zion, and trust in Mount Samaria, Notable persons in the chief nation, To whom the house of Israel comes! Amos 6:1 (NKJV)
In this passage, Amos foretells the “pain” that is about to come upon those who are “at ease in Zion” because their hardened hearts have become impervious to God’s former calls to repent. We find the same indictment in the book of Isaiah, where God forewarns Israel that difficult days are in store for the nation:
You women who are so complacent, rise up and listen to me; you daughters who feel secure, hear what I have to say!
In little more than a year you who feel secure will tremble; the grape harvest will fail, and the harvest of fruit will not come. Tremble, you complacent women; shudder, you daughters who feel secure! Strip off your clothes, put sackcloth around your waists. Isaiah 32:9-11
Talk about pain! The Israelites have become so indifferent to their sin that God has to resort to crippling their economy in order to get their attention. Why is this significant? Because it would appear that there is a strong link between prosperity and the state of becoming complacent. David also makes this connection in the 73rd Psalm:
This is what the wicked are like—always carefree, they increase in wealth. Psalm 73:12
Indeed, why do you think Jesus taught so often about the deceitfulness of wealth? In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus warned that we cannot serve two masters because our hearts will naturally follow whatever we treasure most. Thus, it is impossible to serve both God and wealth, for once you begin to trust in your material possessions rather than God, your inclination is to make decisions which nurture your bank account rather than your relationship with Him—just like the “rich young ruler.” Remember Jesus’ assessment after their encounter?
Jesus looked at [the young man] and said, "How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God! Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." Luke 18:24-25
The danger of wealth, then, is how easily our focus can shift from our eternal treasure to our earthly one. Spiritual numbness sets in as our hearts grow progressively hardened, and the result is that we ignore the voice of God and His call upon our lives. It’s exactly the problem that had manifested itself in the Laodicean church, for their prosperity had blinded them to the magnitude of their backsliding, even as the security that it provided was preventing them from hearing God’s calls to repent. In short, they had lost their “eyes to see” and “ears to hear”:
For this people’s heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn, and I would heal them. Matthew 13:15
And should we be surprised? After all, to be complacent is to be “self satisfied” by definition, so doesn’t any adjective that starts with “self,” unless it’s self-less, stand in stark opposition to Jesus’ call to take up your cross? How can we possibly “die to self” if our primary focus is upon ourselves and our own comfort?
In similar fashion, my fear is that the overwhelming majority of Americans who profess faith in Jesus Christ has lapsed into the very complacency which has always aroused God’s anger. We are blind to the fact that we have compromised the Gospel because we have become so accustomed to our lifestyles, our culture, and especially our half-hearted, self-centered religion. This should be a cause of grave concern for all who call themselves Christ’s disciples, though, because as Revelation 3:16 graphically illustrates, God clearly has no use for this kind of “follower”:
So then, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of My mouth. Revelation 3:16 (NKJV)
Taking Grace for Granted
Let me be frank at this point, God will not tolerate forever the spirit of complacency that fills our churches, our schools, our institutions, and our homes; His patience is “long suffering” but it is not without its limits. So unless we admit that we have forsaken Him, seek His face, and repent of our lukewarm devotion, He will take matters into His own hands in order to turn our hearts back to Him. For as the twelfth chapter of Hebrews reminds us, God’s discipline of His elect did not cease with the passing of the Old Covenant.
For whom the Lord loves He chastens, and scourges every son whom He receives. Hebrews 12:6 (NKJV)
In other words, we need to recognize that we should count on correction from God’s hand whenever we allow our hearts to stray from Him. God wants our whole-hearted devotion—not just a couple of hours on a Sunday morning and the occasional mealtime prayer; moreover, He wants us to trust in Him for our security—not in the material possessions we have accumulated in this world. Therefore, just like the Old Testament nation of Israel or the church at Laodicea, if we play loose with our faith God will bring circumstances into our lives that are designed to get our attention. Because the fact of the matter is that sometimes it takes nothing less than a crisis to break through the hardness of our hearts and rekindle our hunger for God.
No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. Hebrews 12:11
Here’s the catch: if we further harden our hearts in response to God’s correction, then the subsequent discipline—and hence the pain—will only intensify. Why? Because He loves us too much to give up on us! Indeed, once we have been adopted as His children, God has promised that He will do whatever it takes to keep us faithful as His Spirit works to sanctify our hearts. The nation of Israel learned this lesson the hard way, and my fear is that we too are on a collision course with the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now in passing, it is important to note that not all pain in our life comes from God’s discipline—just read through the book of Job! The point isn’t that all pain is a form of divine correction, but rather that we should expect God to bring pain into our lives whenever we get too friendly with our sin. It’s His way of getting our attention and reminding us that we belong to Him. For just as He told the Laodiceans, our repentance—and the life that springs from it—is His goal:
As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten. Therefore be zealous and repent.
Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me. To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne.
He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. Revelation 3:19-22 (NKJV)
This being the case, we would be wise to regard any pain in our lives as a potential warning sign that God is trying to tell us something. Because even if we find that the pain is the result of something else entirely, just as Job’s suffering was the result of Satan’s persecution, we’re asking for trouble if we always start with the assumption that our “chest pains” are nothing more than indigestion.
So how can we tell the difference? How can we learn to differentiate God’s correction from Satan’s attack? Quite frankly, we won’t be able to discern the source of our pain unless we are close to God in the first place—and listening to a weekly sermon isn’t going to make that happen. Fellowship with God is cultivated by spending time in prayer and meditating upon His word every day.
In other words, we need to incorporate disciplines into our daily routines that strengthen, rather than weaken, our bond with Christ. After all, don’t we take measures on a daily basis to protect the health of our physical hearts? We watch what we eat and drink, we make sure to exercise, we see the doctor for an annual physical, and we regularly monitor our cholesterol and blood pressure; yet we seldom, if ever, truly put our hearts and souls under the examination of God’s word.
Just between yourself and the “Great Physician,” then, how are you doing? I’ll admit this is a rhetorical question because the answer is self-evident: “Not so well, Doc.” None of us can hope to measure up to God’s standard or to make ourselves worthy of His grace, which is why we live by faith and praise Him for the forgiveness we have through His Son, Jesus Christ! But there is another, more subtle question that we need to ask ourselves, especially in this country: have we become too comfortable with our “imperfections” in light of our standing in Christ?
Do not miss the point of these letters to the churches! They were not written primarily to convict the recipients of their dire need for the forgiveness that only comes through Jesus Christ. How do we know this? Because these letters are written to the church, to those already in Christ. The real issue is that they were taking their salvation—taking God’s grace—for granted:
Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. Galatians 6:7-8
For this reason, we need to take another look at the letter to the Laodiceans and personalize the questions at hand: Is Jesus on the throne of our hearts, or have our affections likewise shifted to earthly substitutes—wealth or otherwise? Are we daily living out our salvation as we walk with God, or are we floating from Sunday to Sunday, coasting through this life as we wait to punch our tickets to eternity in Heaven? In other words, are we abiding in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, or are we taking our salvation for granted?
Unfortunately, if we are honest, I suspect we have more in common with the Laodiceans than most of us would like to admit…
Thus, it’s high time that the “Church in America” took a long, hard look at itself, because over the course of the last few decades we have lost sight of our mission as well as our identity. Along the way, we have become satisfied with a form of religion that both undermines our witness and renders us barren before the God we claim to serve; moreover, like our first century counterparts, we are just as oblivious to our condition. Accordingly, the purpose of this book is to bring us back to the basics of our faith by jettisoning the spiritual baggage we have acquired from our culture over the years. It’s about getting back to the “three R’s,” if you will, which necessarily follow one from the other:
- Restoring a proper reverence for God
- Understanding the place of repentance in the life of every believer
- Preparing our hearts for genuine revival
To put it differently, this book is ultimately about discipleship, about what it means to be a follower of Christ. And while we will get there eventually, the unfortunate truth is that there’s a lot of “demolition” that has to happen first. Why? Because we are products of our culture, and as such don’t even realize the extent to which it has warped our understanding of God.
Slowly but surely, the American Church has been duped into a subtle form of idolatry that we must repent of before we can ever hope to see revival in this nation…but I’m getting ahead of myself. The first step is that “intervention” I referred to previously, because quite frankly most of us are in a state of denial, or at best ignorance. So until we come to terms with the gravity of our situation, we will never experience the renewal we so desperately need in this country; we need to wake up and admit that things are not as they should be in the church today.
Even more important, though, is that we must also come to the point where we recognize that fixing the problem begins with us…just like the addict. Then, having admitted the problem and taken responsibility for it, we must resolve to tear down the barriers that are preventing us from finding God in all of His fullness. Until these things happen, our decline as a church—and as a nation—will only continue.
In short, we need to realize that we are effectively “Living in Laodicea,” and as such a wake-up call is coming—it’s not a matter of “if” but rather “when.” Because if we fail to rouse ourselves from our spiritual slumber, we can count on being rudely awakened by the hand of God.
(Next–> Revive us…Again?)
Socratic Christianity 