The Church of Laodicea

This is the last of the seven churches of addressed of Asia. Christ begins his discourse to John on the isle of Patmos with the church of Ephesus which was rich in wealth and honor. He ends with the church at Laodicea which was rich with wealth and no honor.

As we have previously stated each of the these seven churches discloses our current spiritual life as well as a current church congregational’s spiritual state. Had Christ only addressed the churches of Smyrna and Philadelphia which had no stated faults, we would have no scripture correction for our church sins and errors. Therefore leaving us without the mandate to repent and correct our spiritual failures.

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With these seven churches God reveals the good and bad of our lives and thus gives us a road map of successful Christian walk. He shows us that our lives can become wanton as Sardis that God’s gets no glory from it and as two before mentioned Smyrna and Philadelphia we can achieve a spiritual life that God only gives praise to.

Most of us fall into the category of the three churches of Ephesus, Pergamos and Thyatira where we are striving to live a good Christian live but have a few issues that are in need of correcting.

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Today we take a study of our final church of the seven that has spiritual state of it’s own which Christ describes as “lukewarm”.

This church was in “limbo”, it was not a church that was on fire and zealous for God and neither was it a congregation that was cold and lifeless. It was a congregation that God simply could not work with.

Laodicea was a very wealthy city. Perhaps the wealthiest of all of the seven.

It was the wealthiest city in the region of Phrygia (fri jia) (now central Turkey)

It was the southern most of the seven churches.

It was so wealthy that in 60 a.d. after an devastating earthquake, it rebuilt itself without the aid of any city or the Roman government.

It was a banking center, It’s wealth also came from the lucrative textile industry of woolen, especially the black wool. It contained a medical school and was a source of a renowned eye salve.

Despite it’s wealth and commercial prominence, Laodicea had no source of water of it’s own.

Water had to be delivered by an aqueduct from the hot springs of Hierapolis (Hy rapolis) some 6 miles away and form the cold waters of Colossae 11 miles away,

Start from verse 14 the Amen

Know thy works neither hot nor cold Lukewarm spit you out of my mouth. You say you are rich but you are poor. Say you need nothing but you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind and naked.

Buy of me gold tried in the fire. so you can be rich and have White clothing. And cover up your nakedness. Anoint your eyes with eyesalve so you can see.

I love you so I rebuke you. Repent.

I stand at the door and knock, if any man hear my voice and open the door I will come in and fellowship with him.

If you overcome this you can sit with me in glory. I am your example because I also overcame when I was in the earth. I am now sitting down with the Father.