The LUKEWARM Verse Has Nothing to Do with Salvation (Most Miss This)

This popular line from Revelation has been preached out of context for years. You know how I know? Because I've done it. Because you're neither hot nor cold, but lukewarm, Jesus says, I will vomit you out of my mouth. By studying the context and uncovering the city, the water system, and even the wealth of the community, you are going to be blown away by the actual meaning. Also, stay to the end, because when Jesus stands at the door and knocks, he's not trying to enter a lost person's heart. He's trying to get into the church that he built. Welcome back to Get Into the Word. My name is Robbie Gallaty. We've arrived at the most recognized of all the seven churches, the Church of Laodicea and Asia Minor. I want you to listen to the words of Jesus in Revelation 3, verse 14. Jesus says in verse 14, Vomit you out of my mouth. Now sit with that for a moment. This is a church that Jesus is talking to, men and women who showed up every week, who would have called themselves believers. And Jesus says their faith makes him sick to his stomach. The word there isn't gentle at all. It's a picture of nausea, of spitting something file outside of your mouth, something that is distasteful. Now for years, I've read this and assumed that Jesus was saying, hot is good and bad is cold. I mean, think about it. Most people don't like cold plunges today.

I do, but most don't. Jesus is almost saying pick a side, right? Don't be in the middle. That's how I've heard it preached. That's how I even preached it myself. But that interpretation falls apart the second you stand in Laodicea and you understand what the people knew about the context. So before we decide which side you're on, hot or cold, let me show you why both of them are actually good and why this completely changes the meaning of the verse. Let's journey back to Laodicea. It sat in the middle of a valley between two cities. And to understand the letter, you have to understand the water system. Six miles north was the city of Heriopolis. It was a world-renowned city for hot springs. They flowed from the Lycus Valley down into the town. People traveled literally from all over the empire just to experience the mineral waters healing properties. They soaked in them, kind of like the Dead Sea, like people travel from all over to go into the Dead Sea for the properties. They even built public baths, private baths. Baths in their homes were built around this. And if you were sick, you went north to be restored by the waters. Now, let's go in the other direction. Nine miles to the southeast was Colossae. Yes, the same Colossae that Paul wrote his letter to the Colossians. The snow on the mountains of Colossae would melt throughout the year. And this would feed the streams with cold, fresh water. It was refreshing. It was invigorating. People were taking ice plunges centuries before anyone made it a wellness trend.

That water was good to drink. It was also good to dive into. Now, here's Laodicea, stuck right in the middle. The city had no good water of its own. So what they did is they piped in from the north. And by the time that water made it from those hot springs traveling miles down those stone aqueducts, it cooled down to a lukewarm temperature. And even worse, watch this, the pipes were so caked with mineral deposits and bacterial buildup that the water came out nauseating. You couldn't even drink it. Archaeologists have pulled up those calcified Roman pipes, and we actually can see them today. So when the people of Laodicea drank their own water, many of them, at first response, spit it back out. So now understanding this, watch what Jesus is saying. Everybody in that region knew that hot water heals and cold water refreshes. Both of them are useful. Both have a purpose. Both do something. But the water in Laodicea, it was neither hot nor cold. It was useless. And so were they. Here's the verse with new eyes. Jesus is saying the kingdom brings healing, like the hot springs. The kingdom brings healing. refreshment like the cold streams.

And you, my church, you're bringing neither. You're having no impact. You're not influencing the people around you. You're not healing the hurting. You're not refreshing the weary. You're not being a force for good in your community. You're actually just lukewarm. And that's the kind of Christian, Jesus says, feel the weight of this. He will vomit out of his mouth. Which raises the question that should haunt every one of us who's watching this, how does a real believer become lukewarm in the first place? Here's the heart of it. The Laodicean church went cold because they compromised the message. And they compromised because of one thing, self-sufficiency. Let me show you the three sources of their pride because it's right in the text. The same three that quietly numb us today. Let's go back to the text and see what it says. Jesus says, for you say I am rich, I become wealthy, and I need nothing. You don't realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked. I advise you to buy from me gold refined in the fire so that you may be rich, white clothes so that you may be dressed, and your shameful nakedness not exposed. Jesus is not holding back any punches.

And an ointment to spread on your eyes so that you may see. One thing we see in the text is that they were rich. Laodicea was a banking center of the entire region. Their vaults were overflowing with gold. When the great earthquake of 8060 leveled the city, Rome offered to fund and rebuild it. And Laodicea said, no, we don't need your money. We don't want your money. They actually rebuilt the entire city themselves out of their own pocket. They took pride in this. The second issue is they were famous for their clothing. The region produced prized black wool from black sheep. And Laodicea exported fine garments all over the empire. The people were the well-dressed, or the best-dressed, if you will, in the entire Roman world. The third indictment is they were known for medicine. They had a respected medical school in town. They crushed a local stone that was there into a powder. And the powder would become a famous eye salve. They used it for treating failing wounds or infections in the eyes. And it was distributed literally all over the ancient world. So here's the issue. Money, clothing, and medicine. They had it all. So their attitude was, we don't need anything. We don't need anyone. We're self-sufficient. And Jesus answers them point for point in verse 17

when he says, you say you're rich, you're actually poor. You say you're well-dressed, you're actually naked. You say you have this medicine, you actually need healing yourself. Do you see the irony? They had everything except the one thing that mattered. Everything they had didn't include Jesus. And if we're not careful, we can fall in the same trap. You're rich in gold, he says, but you're poor in soul. You have every dollar this world offers, but you're still spiritually bankrupt. You're still greedy. You're still empty. You're still depressed. You're dressed to impress. You walk around like someone who's haughty, tauty, holier than thou, but you are shamefully naked before me. The finest wardrobe in the empire can't cover the stain of your sin. Only one person can remove that guilt and that shame, and it's me, he's saying. You sell medicine that helps others see, he says, but in a sense, you're blind to your own blindness. You're treating everyone else's eye condition as a problem, but you don't see your own eye condition. Now, Jesus talked a lot about this in the Sermon on the Mount. You look at the speck in your brother's eye, but you miss the log in your own eye.

That's the terrifying thing about being lukewarm. You're the last person to see it. You're always blind to your own blindness. You've lost the fire for God, and maybe this resonates with somebody. You've lost the passion you once had. You lost the drive you used to have to share the gospel or to pour into people's lives through discipleship, and you can't even feel it happening. You don't even know you're there unless someone points it out. The lukewarm Christian is blinded to his or her own lukewarmness. So how do you get your sight back? How do you start to see again? It starts with seeing who's actually standing in front of you. Now, to fix this, Jesus goes back to introduce himself in the letter, and I want you to notice what he says here to the people because it's unlike any other letter in the seven churches that he's written up to this point. You see, in the other letters, Jesus describes what he has and what he does, but in the Laodicean, See in the letter, he makes a statement about who he is. Thus says the Amen, let's go back and look at it. Thus says the Amen, this is how he starts. The faithful and true witness, the originator of God's creation.

Start with that word Amen. We treat it like a period at the end of a prayer. But in the first century, when you said the word Amen, you were declaring what was just spoken as binding and true. You believe it, you're gonna follow it. You're gonna build your life upon it. When Jesus calls himself the Amen, he's saying, I am the rock. I am the foundation you build your entire life on. Not your bank account, not your reputation, it's me. And then he calls himself the originator of God's creation. This Greek word is arche. It means origin or beginning. But don't picture the first event in a long timeline, that's not what it means. Picture it as an archetype. The source from which everything flows. Jesus doesn't start the sequence, he's the reason there's a sequence to begin with. The pastor Darrell Johnson in his book wrote about how beautifully Jesus said this. And he wrote that arche means, this is interesting, that everything in the universe carries the stamp of Jesus on it. In a sense you could say his fingerprint is on everything. From the microscopic to the far reaches of space, it all bears Jesus's imprint. I love that. E. Stanley Jones said this,

the way of Jesus is written not merely into the text of scripture, but Jesus is written into the very texture of our being as humans. Into our nerves, into our blood, into ourselves. Every cell of life works best when it operates in harmony with the one who made us. So here's the punchline that the wealthy, self-sufficient, Laodicean church never saw coming. You were meant and made by Jesus for Jesus. Which means you and I will never, not with gold, not with clothes, not with medicine from the world, we will never be satisfied until we come to Jesus and surrender to his plan for our lives. I want you to notice, this isn't a one-time transaction. He says, buy from me. In the language of the New Testament, that word there means a present tense ongoing action. You keep coming back to Jesus for riches. You keep coming back to Jesus for covering, for sight, for healing. You press into Jesus for more of God because there's always more of God to have. And sadly, many Christians settle for a surface level, synthetic substitute of the glory of God. Friends, the cure for a lukewarm faith, if that's where you are, isn't trying harder or trying to improve yourself back to God. It's pressing in.

Now there's still one more move left. And this is the one people misread completely. So brace yourself. Here comes the famous line in the book of Revelation that I have and others have preached wrong in verse 20. To the one who conquers, after Jesus says, repent. Now let's go to 19. As many as I love, I rebuke and discipline. So be zealous and repent. See, 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 will be with me. To the one who conquers, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I have conquered and sat down with my father on his throne. Now, you've heard this at the end of 100 altar calls aimed at lost people in the congregation who need to give their life to Jesus. Jesus is at the door knocking on the doorpost of your heart. Open it for Jesus today. But remember who's actually listening to this letter. Is this letter written to the lost or to the church? It's actually written to believers. Jesus is not knocking on the door of an unbeliever's heart here. He's standing outside of the church he built knocking to get back in. He's saying, you're worshiping without me.

You're gathering together without me. You're living your whole religious experience without me. And his answer is this. It isn't try harder, do better, white knuckle it more. No, the answer is one word, open the door. Now, here's a detail most people miss. That word see or look is a command. And there's an urgency in this when Jesus speaks it. You may not get another knock. This is a strange door, why? Because it has no handle on the outside. The only handle is on the inside. And what do I mean? Jesus will not force his way in. He doesn't barge into our lives. He knocks and he waits, and he lets us decide if we will open and let him in. The whole thing hinges on you opening the door. So let me ask you straight out, when Jesus knocks on the door of your heart, do you open it as a believer, and even an unbeliever, but as a believer, or do you wait for him to leave? When I was a kid, when the Mormons or the Jehovah's Witnesses would come knocking, my mom would regularly get us, my sister and I, and she would say, be quiet. We'd hide under the kitchen table until they walked away. She was not prepared to defend the little bit of faith she had, which she wasn't tuned into the Bible,

didn't know the scriptures, and so we would hide until the people left. So we would just stay quiet until the knocking stopped, in a sense. I wonder how many times Jesus knocks on the door of our heart, and we go quiet and wait for him to leave. Why don't we open the door? Often, it's simply because we don't have room for him in our lives. Picture your life as a jar. Let's say that I had a jar here, and there's sand inside the jar. The things that don't matter at all. Pebbles are the things that matter a little, so sand is like insignificant things. The pebbles, which are a little bigger, are things that matter, and then the big rocks on the outside are actually things that truly matter. Normally, what we do is we put the sand in first in our life, the scrolling on the phone, the streaming on YouTube, the games, the feeds. Then we put in the pebbles second, the activities, travel ball, extra hours at the office, side hustles, and by the time we get to the things that really matter, the big rocks, if you imagine the picture here, there's no room for prayer. There's no room for the Word. There's no room for meditation, silence, or solitude.

There's no room for church, why? Because the jar is full. There's no room left. It's no accident that on the night Jesus was born, there was no room for him in the end. That's not just history. It's a picture of our human hearts. The religious leaders had no room for him. The Pharisees had no room for him. The people in the temple of Jerusalem had no room for him. His own people had no room for him, and if we're honest, a lot of us leave no room for Jesus either, and underneath all of this is the hardest truth of the whole letter. It's because we really don't love him. We like enough fire insurance to get us out of hell. We like knowing we're covered if we die, but we don't actually make time to be with him. When I spent months in silence and solitude, just sitting with the Lord on my porch, God showed me something that wrecked me. For years, I had said to Jesus, I love you, but I almost never spent time alone with him. Let me make it plain to you. If I told my wife, Candy, I love spending time with you, but every time we went out on a date or out to the mall or with the family, I brought a friend with me. Let's say I brought my friend Mike with me.

Every time we go to dinner, hey, you don't mind if Mike's gonna go out with me, or you don't mind if Jeremy's gonna go on a walk with us. How long before Candy would start to question whether I loved her at first? How long before Candy would start to question our intimacy? And then there is no intimacy, why? Because it takes time. You show somebody you love them by spending time with them. I want you to feel the weight of this. When was the last time you sat with God and God alone? No phone, no agenda, no noise. Not trying to get something out of him, just wanting to be with him. For a lot of us, we can't remember the last time we did that, because normally we come to God with our laundry list of items and ideas that we want him to rubber stamp for our life, because we know best, right? I wanna say this clearly to your heart. Look at me. I believe God misses your company. Jesus, in a sense, is right now standing at the door of a lukewarm church. He's standing outside of the door of your home, and he's still knocking. And he's not asking you to perform. He's not asking you to clean yourself up first. He's asking you to do the only thing you can do,

and that is reach for the handle on the inside and open the door. Make Jesus a priority. Put him first in your life. Let him come back in and follow him, because the one who's knocking is the amen, the foundation of your feet. The one who's knocking is the RK, the one who made you and knows you better than yourself. And he's not content to stay on the outside of his church or even your heart any longer. So don't hide under the table like I did when people would knock at the door. Open the door and let Jesus come in. If this video helped you see something new in God's word, do me a favor, share it with someone. It really helps us get the word out. And if you haven't subscribed to the channel, go ahead and do so. Now really helps us see who's following us. And crazy as it is, 80% of you aren't subscribed to the channel who watch these videos. So do that now. And if you're interested in another video, I have two that I think you will really like about more of the Word. Until next time, get into the Word until the Word gets into you.