28. THE KINGDOM PARABLES – THE SEVENTH – THE DRAGNET – PART 4 OF 6
The seven Kingdom parables of Matthew 13 are a wonderful study of integration. In all these we have looked at the parable itself to understand it. Then we looked at the parallel church in Revelation chapters 2 and 3 that matches each parable. Then we look at the place in the 2 000 years of Church History that each parable represents. The remarkable thing about all this is that every one of these considerations is in consecutive order.
Man could never have written something so true and accurate. The authorship of the bible is nothing less than the Holy Spirit who penned through the inspired writers. In the very last message (27) we were working through the letter to the church at Laodicea. Laodicea matches the parable of the Dragnet, a time of judgement because this church was being judged by God. It has become a disgrace to the witness of the Lord.
We will devote this message, and the next, to the letter to the church. Last time we left off at Verse 16 of Revelation 3, and now we continue with Verse 17.
[[D]]. BOTH RICH AND POOR; WEALTHY AND WRETCHED
{{Revelation 3:17 Because you say, ‘I am RICH and have become WEALTHY and have need of nothing,’ and you do not know that you are WRETCHED and MISERABLE and POOR and BLIND and NAKED”}}
What you may think of yourself may not be the true reality, and in Laodicea it certainly was not the case. The was a huge divide between the church’s own report card, and the Lord’s own summation. For self-sufficiency, the church earned 100% but for godly dependence, it gained 0%.
How awful it is if the Lord stood in your church and said to you all, “This church is wretched, miserable, poor, blind and naked.” The self-righteous would be up in arms. I wonder what the reception was like in that church when John’s letter was received?
One might expect a wealthy city to produce a wealthy and prosperous church in spiritual matters, but the character of the city had affected the Christians too, and the Revelation description in Chapter 3 portrays an irresolute, half-hearted body, whose principal interest was material prosperity rather than spiritual good. Enthusiasm and zeal were absent and the community was lukewarm with not one word of commendation from the Lord.
How do you measure success? In the world, most consider success lies with one’s accumulated wealth and possessions. Some less avaricious, consider peace and contentment to be the achievement leading to success. The Laodicean church was successful – in their eyes! Success with the Lord has nothing to do with materialism.
WHAT WOULD CAUSE A CHURCH TO BECOME LIKE THAT?
The causes are many but can we say that two words come to the surface. One is pride and the other is self-dependence.
Pride is very cunning. It does not spring on a person; it slowly creeps and infiltrates. It does it so subtly that the person believes this lie and cements his own position. If you contended with the church at Laodicea and told them they were proud and had their priorities wrong, the people would be up in arms. “How dare you accuse us!”
Self-dependence comes through self-achievement. The words of the song a few decades ago, “I did it my way,” is what Laodicea was all about and the church followed suit. Christians must be careful. Once you get out of the Lord’s boat and start rowing in your own, then you are always moving away from Jesus Christ. You are in a sea of failure.
Well, that church had no need of anything because it was self made. Its establishment was based of the precepts of man.
Don’t for one moment, any of us, think that would not happen to us. Sin is deceitful and catches us up when we slip out of a true dependence on the Lord. One thing Jesus said that is highly significant was this – {{John 15:4-6 “ABIDE IN ME, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. I am the vine and you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing. IF ANYONE DOES NOT ABIDE IN ME, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up, and they gather them and cast them into the fire and they are burned.”}}
Abiding is essential to the fullest degree. It is as close as a tree branch holding solidly to the tree trunk. We all know what happens in a storm when a branch is severed from the tree. The leaves soon wither and the branch dies. The tree is “sad” too and weeps its sap.
Many bible versions translate abide as “remain”. Remaining means staying, not wandering off. The Laodiceans had wandered off into a rejection of the Lord.
A LOOK AT THEIR CONDITION IN REVELATION 3:17
Do you recall what the Lord called them?
They were wretched, miserable, poor, blind and naked. Did they know it? NO, they did not. In that, they were hypocrites regarding the standing they should have had in Christ. The quotation that follows is quite insightful:-
Professor Mozley’s wrote, [[ “Why should a man repent of his goodness? He may well repent, indeed, of his falsehood; but unhappily the falsehood of it, is just the thing he does not see, and which he cannot see by the very law of his character. The Pharisee did not know he was a Pharisee. If he had known it, he would not have been a Pharisee.
The victim of passion, then, may be converted - the gleeful, the thoughtless, or the ambitious; he whom human glory has intoxicated; he whom the show of life has ensnared; he whom the pleasures of sense have captivated - any one of these may be converted; but who is to convert the hypocrite? He does not know he is a hypocrite; he cannot upon the very basis of his character; he must think himself sincere; and the more he is in the shackles of his own character, i.e., the greater hypocrite he is, the more sincere he must think himself.” ]]
NOW FOR THEIR CONDITIONS:-
(A). WRETCHED – They had sunk into a pitiful condition, very miserable in the things of God. They did not know it but they were, and they would not accept that description of them.
(B). MISERABLE – Not necessarily being in a sad and mournful state, but rather, their condition was such, that it begged pity and compassion for them. Feeling sorry for them.
(C). POOR – Definitely not in the material sense for they were wealthy but they were poor! Barnes has written, [[ “Their worldly property could not meet the needs of their souls; and, with all their pretensions to piety, they had not religion enough to meet the necessities of their nature when calamities should come, or when death should approach; and they were, therefore, in the strictest sense of the term, poor.” ]]
Some of the wealthiest/richest people on the planet are in absolute spiritual poverty; Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg being two cases in point.
(D). BLIND – We all have two sets of eyes, a physical one and a spiritual one. A spiritually dead man sees only through physical eyes, and the spiritual eyes are as black as the blackest night. The Laodiceans were spiritually blind to the truth and meaning of God. (We will see later on that the church at Laodicea matches the spiritually dead current age in Church History).
Barnes again provides interesting comments here:- [[ “They did not see the reality of their condition; they had no just views of themselves, of the character of God, of the way of salvation. This seems to be said in connection with the boast that they made in their own minds - that they had everything; that they wanted nothing. One of the great blessings of life is clearness of vision, and their boast that they had everything must have included that.” ]]
(E). NAKED – Adam and Eve existed in nakedness before sin but sin gave them a public shame. These church people at Laodicea were spiritually naked but had no shame about their condition. They had nothing to cover the nakedness of the soul, and in respect to the real needs of their nature they were like one who had no clothing in reference to cold, and heat, and storms, and to the shame of nakedness. Salvation is often represented as a garment - Matthew 22:11-12; Revelation 6:11; Revelation 7:9, Revelation 7:13-14
[[E]]. RECOMMENDATIONS FROM GOD ALMIGHTY
{{Revelation 3:18 “I advise you to buy from Me GOLD refined by fire that you may become rich, and WHITE GARMENTS that you may clothe yourself, and that the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed, and EYE SALVE to anoint your eyes that you may see.”}}
The Lord advises. He never compels or forces or bribes. He has given us free will to follow Him or not to. What did the Laodiceans do? The word in the NASB “advise” is evenly split with advise or counsel in all the versions. The interesting thing about this word is that the Greek “sun” is used with the word advise as a compound word, which means to counsel/advise together. The Lord is supreme and advises, but the one being advised must also assent.
Many point out that irony is used here as those who are wretched and poor are advised to buy from the Lord. Buying from the Lord is like salvation that’s bought. It isn’t! All from God is a free gift but for the Laodiceans there is a price, and that price is submission, repentance and dependence.
These three items to buy – gold, white garments, and eye salve, were exactly what that church needed.
(a). GOLD
“The Patmos Letters” by Dr A Tatford - [[ “The city was given to trading and the Lord addressed these merchants in their own language. (He requests they trade with Him and they knew full well the banking system. The Laodicean bankers and money changers were never able to issue untarnished gold to their clients (although they prided themselves on its quality) and Christ consequently counselled them to buy of Him gold tried in the fire. No gold from the interior of Asia Minor, however long and careful the process of refining, could ever attain the high standard of the metal He offered. Their preoccupation had to change from the material wealth they enjoyed to an appreciation of the heavenly treasures.” ]]
True wealth lies in gold, and the Lord speaks of gold, but I do not believe He means it in a metallic sense. Gold is one of the types of divinity in the bible and as we invest in the divinity of God we become rich. What do we mean by divinity? It means being acquainted with the Lord our God and enjoying His delights in the bible. It means feasting on Him. That is gold beyond measure, and to partake in it makes us rich.
(b). WHITE GARMENTS
Again I quote “The Patmos Letters” by Dr A Tatford – [[ “The glossy dark of Laodicea from the sheep was famous throughout the world, but the Lord offered these Christians clothes of dazzling white if they would but receive it. He had warned them of their nakedness, lest their spiritual nudity become evident to all, and exhorted them to be clothed in the raiment He offered. (3:18). Divine righteousness was available to cover them as a robe and to conceal the nudity of which they were totally unaware.” ]]
They required white garments to symbolize a flawless Christian demeanor, akin to the locally produced glossy black wool. Strabo, a Greek historian, has written – [[ “Laodicea, though formerly small, grew large in our time and in that of our fathers . . . It was the fertility of its territory and the prosperity of certain of its citizens that made it great . . . . “The country round Laodiceia produces sheep that are excellent, not only for the softness of their wool . . . but also for its raven-black color, so that the Laodiceans derive splendid revenue from it, as do also the neighbouring Colosseni [the Colossians.” ]]
White garments are a mark of the righteousness and purity of the saints of God – {{Revelation 3:5 “He who overcomes shall thus be clothed in WHITE GARMENTS and I will not erase his name from the book of life, and I will confess his name before My Father and before His angels. Revelation 19:14 The armies which are in heaven, clothed in FINE LINEN, WHITE AND CLEAN, were following Him on white horses.”}}
Whiteness and white garments relate to the secret in this verse – {{Revelation 7:14 and I said to him, “My lord, you know,” and he said to me, “These are the ones who come out of the great tribulation, and they have WASHED THEIR ROBES AND MADE THEM WHITE IN THE BLOOD OF THE LAMB.”}}. That secret is the blood of the Lamb that washes whiter than snow.
The Laodiceans needed these clean, white garments because they were dirty and sinfully naked to the world.
(c). EYE SALVE
The eye salve was needed to give them sight – spiritual sight. Christians can have blindness to God and it is a terrible condition to be in. The trouble with that is that your eyes can see but they can’t comprehend one’s own condition, and that is blindness that no earthly ophthalmologist can cure. It needs the Divine Physician.
The Laodiceans boasted of their ointments and of their superlative eye salve - probably a mixture of oil and the collyrium powder (described by Aristotle). They were able to cure others but the Lord accused them of being blind and counselled them to buy His own eye salve and anoint their eyes so that the illuminating grace of the Holy Spirit might remove their spiritual blindness. The Great Physician had His own remedy.
The touch of the Master’s hand on our eyes is marvellous. Place yourselves in the shoes of he who said, {{John 9:25 He therefore answered, “Whether He is a sinner, I do not know. One thing I do know, that, whereas I WAS BLIND, NOW I SEE.”}}. Not only is that needed for salvation, but also for taking stock along our journey of life.
