Men's Luncheon - Zach Tomlinson - April 21, 2026

I'm Zach Tomlinson.

Apparently I didn't do too bad the last time I was here.

I didn't say anything too bad.

Greg let me come back.

We're on a good track so far.

For anybody who brought their Bibles or wants to join me, we're gonna be in Revelation 3, 14 through 22.

To give a little bit of context while we're going there, uh as we're we've been going through the uh sort of Bible recap, the daily reading, uh the passages we've been in the past few days have been uh Saul and David, um, and obviously Saul's mistreatment of David.

Uh and originally I was going to go through sort of a spiritual warfare thing uh discussion on that, but in light of Greg's excellent preaching the past two weeks and his teaching last Tuesday, I decided let's go a different route.

Um and so as I was thinking about it, this passage stuck out to me just because it has to do with a common misconception of God wants you to either be hot or cold towards him.

He doesn't want you to be lukewarm.

And I think that's a very bad misconception once we get into the context of this passage.

Um a lot of us have heard the phrase, uh, you're either for me or you're against me.

Uh we like to make this uh you know, one-way, two-way street of you're either going one way or the other.

And I think sometimes people read this passage to the church in Laodicea and they treat it the same way.

They say it's better to be cold or hard-hearted towards God than to be lukewarm.

As we get into it, I will argue that instead God wants us to be useful one way or the other.

Um again, we're gonna be in Revelation 3, 14 through 22, and I'm gonna go ahead and open this up in prayer.

Uh dear Heavenly Father, just thank you for this day, and thank you for everything you've given us.

Uh, the freedom to be able to meet together for lunch on a Tuesday morning in public, uh, just the ability to gather together uh people from all walks of life uh throughout the River Valley and just come together and worship you and grow together in your word, Lord.

And I just really pray that uh you speak through me, Lord, and that we apply whatever it is you want us to learn from this into our daily lives so that we can impact everyone around us, Lord.

In Jesus' name I pray.

Amen.

So I'll go ahead and read our passage for today, uh, and again it's Revelation 3, 14 through 22.

And to the angel of the church in Laodicea write the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of God's creation.

I know your works, you are neither cold nor hot.

Would that you were either cold or hot.

So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth, for you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.

I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, so that you may be rich, and white garments, so that you may clothe yourself, and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, so that you may see.

Those whom I love I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent.

Behold, I stand at the door and knock.

If any one hears my voice and opens the door, I will come into him and eat with him, and he with me.

The one who conquers, I will grant him to sit with me on my throne, as I also conquered and sat down with my father on his throne.

He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.

And again, to connect this to what we've been reading in the Bible recap, uh God wanted Saul to repent of his sin and to become the king that he was supposed to be, and when he didn't, that is when he anointed David to follow after God's desire for what a king should be.

So we see this sort of anointing as the coming on of God's Spirit, and I would say that we also get the same choice in our lives.

You see, in verses 14 through 16, we see that Christ desires a fruitful response in our lives.

And I'll read that again.

And to the angel of the church in Laodicea, write, the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of God's creation.

I know your works, you are neither cold nor hot.

Would that you are either cold or hot.

So because you are lukewarm and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.

And this is where that sort of misconception that John is not arguing, and Jesus is not saying that we need to be cold-hearted towards God.

Rather, in the context, we see that John is saying, well, Jesus is saying through John that we need to be on fire and doing things for God's kingdom.

You see, in this context for Laodicea, they had two sources of water, neither of which came from Laodicea itself.

Their hot water came from Heropolis, which is a hot spring, and this was used for healing.

And by the time the water reached Laodicea from Heropolis, uh it wasn't really warm.

Um fortunately, they didn't have tap water like we do, and it had to go through sort of their aqueduct process.

Um, and so they wanted the hot water, and anytime they could get it, it was a no pun intended hot commodity.

Um but you see, hot water had its use.

It was used for healing.

Now, cold water came from Mount Cadmus from Colossae.

It was suitable for drinking.

But again, by the time it got to Laodicea, it kind of became lukewarm.

It wasn't as cold, it wasn't as refreshing to drink.

I think the closest illustration I've come up with or heard is coffee.

Uh some people really liked iced coffee.

Some people really like hot coffee.

They both find joy from drinking it because it serves a different purpose.

Uh you could be like me, and I don't like coffee in general.

I think it's dirty, like dirt water.

I don't know what else to call it.

Um, but I do know that when my throat's sore during allergy season, which in Arkansas we know you need a special drink during allergy season, and usually for me it's hot chocolate.

Hot chocolate soothes my throat.

It is perfect, it's what I want.

Now, when I go outside today, I do not want hot chocolate because it is already hot and I feel like my insides are bubbling from the heat.

Instead, I want that iced lemonade.

That makes me feel better.

So there we see hot and cold has a purpose.

It serves a purpose, and that is what God is wanting from us.

It is not about being cold towards God in the sense that we are shutting him out of our lives, but rather we're serving a purpose rather whether or not it's one way or another.

You see, we are we're all different people.

We all come from different walks of life, different influences, different spheres, and social circles.

And specifically, we all have different gifts that God has given us through our salvation and the Holy Spirit.

And he wants us to use our differences to work together to build the kingdom further than we could alone.

So, Christ desires a fruitful response in our lives.

That's important.

But we have a few questions.

Um, in our day and age, the most important question that we'll get asked is by what power are we able to have this response, this fruitful response in our life?

Luckily, Jesus knows in advance that we're going to ask this, and answers it in verses 17 through 18, where Christ affirms that he is the source of the fruitful response in our lives.

You see, in 17 through 18 he says, For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing.

Not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.

I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, so that you may be rich in white garments, so that you may clothe yourself, and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen, and salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see.

And again, going back to the context of this city is very important.

You see, Laodicea was a very, very rich and prosperous city.

It sat at the crossroads of all of the major trading routes in the area, so it was a center for banking.

So you see, they're saying they are rich physically, so all of their problems could be solved through physical wealth, or so they thought.

This is really emphasized by the fact that uh after an earthquake destroyed the city in AD 60, they rejected imperial help to rebuild the city.

So you can already see their mindset of we're gonna pull ourselves up by the bootstraps, we're gonna do this on our own.

If we don't need the emperor's help, unfortunately they had the mindset of we probably don't need God's help either.

We can do this on our own, by our own capacity.

And by the time John wrote Revelation in about AD 90, it had already become prosperous.

So this bad mindset had been reinforced by their physical success.

But what is true for our physical needs is not always true for our spiritual needs.

You see, Laodicea was also known for its textile and medical industries.

So here, Jesus is hitting on every major aspect of their secular lives.

He was saying, I know you're known for your textiles, but you need to buy your white textiles from me so that you may be clothed in righteousness.

And then he calls them spiritually blind, saying they need salve for their eyes so that they can see.

You may be able to solve physical sight problems and cure people through that, through your medical knowledge, but only Jesus and the Holy Spirit can cure us of our spiritual blindness that we all too often ignore.

You see, Jesus is pointing out that their worldly wealth will not save them.

And specifically, it has blinded them to their spiritual poverty.

I think all too often we think we're above that, but in our Western culture, I think we're just as susceptible to the same issue.

Let's make it pretty easy to apply to our own lives.

Uh we'll go back to the Bible recap.

Uh I am working at ArcBest full-time.

Uh, I will fully admit I am not as busy as I claim to be with that job, but yet I still use that as my excuse whenever I miss a day in Bible recap.

Now I only work eight hours a day.

There are 16 other hours in the day that I could do this Bible recap, but I still use that as an example or as an excuse of why I did not do my reading for the day.

That reading that takes 15 minutes I could not do in 16 hours.

Again, this is not something new.

Every issue that is dealt with in the Bible has been dealt with for a reason because it's going to be a recurring theme in their lives as well as our own.

So you see, I want us to be careful about what our goals are.

In Western culture, especially in the United States, we say our one goal in life, especially as men, we are supposed to be successful.

We're going to take care of our families, we're going to get the best job, get the most money, buy a big house so our wife can stay at home.

Now, I'm not saying having goals is not good, but I'm saying having goals without testing where our heart is, is very dangerous.

Our goals can be used to test where our heart is, and if our goals only reflect physical wealth and not spiritual wealth, then we need to reorient ourselves.

And unfortunately, that's where we need the help of the Holy Spirit.

We can't reorient ourselves on our own power.

We need to be in the Word.

We need to be together with our community of brothers and sisters in Christ.

You see, we need to really look at ourselves and ask, how are we going to fulfill our goals?

And if we say by our own power, like we're too easy to do, then we've fundamentally misunderstood what Jesus is saying here.

That we need to accomplish our goals through his work in our lives.

Now I'm not saying that we don't have any decisions to make ourselves, but we need to make the decisions with the Holy Spirit and through the power of Jesus.

So we've asked, who is our source and what is Christ's expectation for us?

Our next question is how and when do we fruitfully respond?

And again, luckily, Jesus answers this question for us.

And I argue that the fruitful response begins with turning from sin and to Jesus.

And we see that in verses 19 through 22, which reads, Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline.

So be zealous and repent.

Behold, 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 with me.

The one who conquers, I will grant him to sit with me on my throne, as I also conquered and sat down with my father on his throne.

But who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.

You see, Jesus does not abandon us in our worldly problems.

He does not leave us when we need him most.

But he earnestly seeks us with his loving rebuke.

I think that's the hard part for a lot of people in our culture today is any sort of rebuke is seen as negative.

Oh, if they disagree with me, they don't like me.

Oh, if they're getting on to me, they don't love me.

Unfortunately, that is not the case, and all too often, it is exactly when we're dealing with someone that we love that we want to rebuke them because we want what's best for them.

You see, he reaches out to us, and our response is to repent.

Because we have sinned, we have fallen short, and Jesus has made a way, we need to accept his gift of salvation in our lives.

You see, in verse 20, he says, uh, I will come into him and eat with him, and he with me.

He is offering not only salvation, but a relational restoration.

He's bringing us back into the fold, back into right relationship with him and with God.

And you see, the one who conquers and is victorious in this passage is the one who repents.

The one who overcomes spiritual warfare is the one who repents by the power of the Holy Spirit through the works of Jesus Christ.

You see, salvation is not won by our works, but it is a gift we accept.

And our accepting it is still important.

Our choices still matter.

To illustrate this, um, if you went to the doctor, uh, you want him to give you the correct diagnosis.

Now, if you start taking some medicine and after a few months realize nothing's getting better and you go back, and he says, Well, I didn't want to offend you by giving you a harsh diagnosis, so I gave you a lesser one.

I don't think any of us would be happy with it.

We want the correct diagnosis so we can get the correct medicine.

Well, you see, God has identified the correct diagnosis for the problems in our lives.

It's sin.

The correct medicine is accepting Jesus as our Lord and Savior and also responding fruitfully through that acceptance of Jesus.

Jesus said it himself.

So the question is, are we going to let him in or not?

Now, that answer is between you and him, but I will say, if you're wondering when the correct time to respond and let him in, the answer is now.

There is no better time than the present to accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior.

Now, for many of us have been Christians for quite a long time, and to you, I would ask, what in your life are you needing to repent of?

Unfortunately, we're all still sinners, and we all have sin in our life.

So instead of accepting Jesus as our Lord and Savior that we have that you would have already done, look at your own life and evaluate it for what we need to repent of.

Christ is our Savior, and we do not want to solely his works in our life by continuing on in our sin.

No.

We cannot deceive ourselves into complacency.

Um the idea that, oh, we're better than that person over there.

Uh you heard about the issue at that church across the street, right?

Uh all too often gossip in our culture has become so prominent and so excused.

Um, but as much as culture tries to deceive us into believing these lies that we are good because we're better than someone else, we should not be attempting to lie to ourselves or our fellow believers, because we all should know that we're all sinners.

So I would just ask us all to be honest with ourselves and with the sins that we struggle with.

And I'm not just saying to be honest with yourself, but to share them with our fellow believers so that we can grow together and serve God however we can so that we can be either hot or cold for him.

Whatever purpose God has for you, you need to be willing to serve in that capacity.

But when we are so focused on our own sins and ignoring them, we lose sight of the work that Jesus has set before us.

So with that, I'll go ahead and pray us out.

Dear Heavenly Father, I just thank you for this day, and I want to just bless everyone that came here and spent the time to learn a little bit more about you, Lord, and just set us on fire or give us your purpose, whether it's hot or cold, Lord.

Give us whatever direction you need from us in our lives, both corporately and individually, and just give us your direction so that we can continue moving forward towards your kingdom, Lord.

In Jesus' name I pray.

Amen.