V15. “I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I could wish you were cold or hot.
Let us continue with the popular hot and cold verse. Jesus said He wished they were either hot (zealous) or cold. Hot water is good for cleaning one’s self (purifying), hot water also makes for nourishing food and drinks – our (nourishment). Coldwater is refreshing and can wake someone up (repentance). However, what good is lukewarm water? It is not good for much. It is nasty to drink, most people like it cold or hot. There is one thing it is good for; to sit in and relax. It puts you to sleep, it is comfortable and makes you not want to do anything but lay back and coast. The feeling that work is over and it is time to relax.
Many people feel that since Jesus paid for it all then all we have to do is go with it and not make waves. After all, nobody wants to be a fanatic! Are you following me here? That is the lukewarm church, it is comfortable and it wants to relax and not to get too stressed out. We want comfortably air-conditioned churches. We like on time and orderly services that are on a schedule. We want in and out. We want messages that do not convict or challenge us. We want messages that pump us up. We do not want to be challenged or to have our faith stretched in any way.
Again the problems with lukewarm churches are that they are neither hot nor cold. It is not so cold, that the churches can be criticized and look bad, and they actually are warm enough to look legitimate on the outside. However, it is a counterfeit for the genuine hot church. It looks real, people are going to church, and they know all the right lingo that is associated with the Bible and church. To the outsider, they look the part, and with all its glitz it looks blessed. But from Jesus’s perspective, it is a scam. They are hot enough not to be considered a cold religion but not hot enough to change the world they live in, as we can read in the Book of Acts.
Why do so many Christians today read the Books of Acts and ask this question: Why do we not resemble that church today? The fundamentalist’s believers, came up with a doctrine to cover that: The days of Apostles, Prophets and the Baptism of the Holy Spirit has passed. We can not expect to see God work the same way as then. It was just only for a short time until we got the Bible.
I want you to know there is not one Bible doctrine to support that idea except for some bad texts of the Bible misquoted and misinterpreted. Any Christian who is honest can sit down and read the Book of Acts and know without a doubt that we in America do not resemble that first century Church at all. They were legit and the real deal. So now take a moment and compare them with us.
Once again, let us look at most Fundamental Church Doctrines: they tell us that Salvation is nothing more than excepting Jesus as Savior and one day you will go to heaven. In the meantime, they teach come to church, read your Bible, learn your denominational doctrine and live a good life and when you do sin, confession and rededicate your life to Christ. They have canceled out any of what Jesus told us to do in the Great Commission. They simply erased anything that is supernatural in the believer’s life. Let us read Jesus’s words:
Mark 16: 17-18: And these signs will follow those who believe (believers not only Apostles) : In My name they will cast out demons; they will speak with new tongues; 18 they[b] will take up serpents; and if they drink anything deadly, it will by no means hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.”
These are some remarkable things JESUS commanded his believers to do! Does your church exercise these commands?
We do not believe in any of what Jesus told us to do in the Great Commission. They have reduced Salvation to a prayer to go to heaven or a “free ticket.” In the Greek, the word for “salvation and saved” are Soteria and Sozo, which means: i.e., acceptance, deliverance, provision, prosperity, and healing, to make whole. Where is the faith in that teaching that excludes this?
Where is the life of faith in that teaching that excludes all these wonderful benefits God blesses us with? If you reread the Great Commission, you will see that Jesus is teaching the believers that they will have power over spiritual demons, they will speak in tongues, that there is supernatural protection for their lives and then last he tells us to heal the sick not pray for the sick!
Where is living a supernatural life in going to church once a week and then living the rest of the week for ourselves? These churches then condemn any ministers or ministries, who do preach these articles of living in faith.
On the other side of the coin, The Charismatic or Spirit-Filled Churches, who do believe in faith and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. There are those who made the supernatural life into living a selfish and greedy life, full of materialism and pride. A lot of services are reduced to nothing more than cheerleading sessions with no real supernatural results. I heard a preacher once say those who believe in healing are always sick, those who preach prosperity are broke and so one. So many preach it but never take the time to learn how to operate with the Holy Spirit and operate in the gifts.
I believe for most are Christians in America, we want a comfortable form of Christianity and like a mention in the last article, we want it safe for the whole family. We want to sit in a warm bubble bath of Christianity, so we can relax and unwind from a hard and evil world and wait for Jesus to return.
The lukewarm church is like an actor/actress playing a part in a movie. As we watch a movie, they can bring the character to life. They draw out our emotions and we believe it is so real that as we watch the movie we may cry or get angry depending on the movie. However, at the end of the movie the person on the screen is not the real person and what you just watched is not reality.
I think this is the way the Lord looks at this current Laodicean church. It looks so real, so moving, it can stir up emotions and get us angry but at the end, it produces no real lasting effects on our surroundings nor does it impact the world around us. I would like to finish with this comparison:
How can 120 people who gathered in the Upper Room and received the Baptism of the Holy Spirit change a whole Roman Empire and we can have 120 churches in one city and not make an impact on that city?
Do you see what I mean? I will continue this with the next verse in the next blog: Do we lose our Salvation?
16. “So then, because you are lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of My mouth.
