“So then, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew you out of My mouth” (Revelation 3:16).
The people that went to church in Laodicea were respectable, sentimental, nominal, skin-deep Christians. They appeared to have taken a lukewarm bath of religion.
They remind me of a little boy that fell out of bed one night. “However did that happen?” inquired his mother as she tucked him in securely again.
“I think I stayed too near where I got in!” the little one explained!
Hot springs above Laodicea tumbled down the cliff side, becoming lukewarm by the time the city dwellers put them to use, so the Lord Jesus knew they would understand Him when He accused them of being lukewarm! “You are . . .neither cold nor hot.” Jesus said to them. The Greek words for cold and hot are most emphatic, meaning ice-cold and boiling hot. God would have us boiling or freezing rather than simmering down to tasteless tepidity.
When you are lukewarm, you think you “have need of nothing” (v. 17), when you are in need of everything. You are really spiritually impoverished, yet you count yourself religion-rich, and think yourself a “mature” overseer.
You are like the blind leading the blind. This sort of easy belief makes God sick (see v. 16)! It’s so easy to be neither one thing nor the other. All you have to do is “nothing.” No growing, no going, no knowing, no sowing! That will do it. But Jesus would not have it so. He would “wish you were cold or hot” (v.15).
