In Revelation 3:17 Jesus gives 5 descriptions of the Laodicean church. In the next verse, He offers solutions to only 3 of them. Why? In this message we examine the only other Bible verses where the words “wretched” and “miserable” are used to discover how Jesus guarantees us victory!

<p>In Revelation 3:17 Jesus gives 5 descriptions of the Laodicean church. In the next verse, He offers solutions to only 3 of them. Why? In this message we examine the only other Bible verses where the words “wretched” and “miserable” are used to discover how Jesus guarantees us victory!</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Waitara Seventh-day Adventist Church

The Final Call

Justin Torossian

1- The Laodicean Dilemma

My name is Justin Tarosian, as you've heard.

I grew up in a small town in Northern California on the top of a mountain, although we call it a hill.

It's where Pacific Union College is, and It is a piece of land that God actually revealed to Ellen White and Vision that we should purchase as a church.

And anyhow, I lived there the first 22 years of my life.

I was blessed to go to college there and then moved to Central California where I worked for 4 years as a pastor, and a year before that as a Bible worker, but 4 years as a pastor in a 1, 100 member church, was a large church there in Fresno, and you may have heard of a man named Pastor Stephen Boar.

All right, He is my good friend, mentor, and my senior pastor for those years, and I enjoyed my time there.

For the last 3 months, I've been at Andrews University in Berrien Springs, Michigan, and it is incredibly cold, especially compared to here right now.

We're in our fall, and I am excited to be here in the summer.

We had a beautiful day, and the weather was incredible.

People, you know, the weather may be cold outside, but people's hearts tend to be warm.

Anyhow, I'm there studying, getting my master's degree, and will be back in the workforce in California in about 2 years.

So that's what's going on with me right now, and I am more than happy to give up my, it's not really giving up my Thanksgiving break to come here, but it gives me more of a reason to be grateful and to be thankful to be here in Australia with my new church family.

So I'm happy and blessed to be here with you tonight and excited about what the Lord wants to share with each 1 of us this coming week.

Justin, thank you so much, and we look forward to tonight.

I didn't know if you wanted me to mention my lineage.

I am the, or My great, great, great grandparents on 1 side of my family are James and Ellen White.

And they're 2 people who God used in incredible ways.

And my life has been transformed by reading the materials that God has written through both of them, especially Ellen White, of course.

And we are so blessed to be a part of a church that is built on the backs of, or built on the foundation of the work of our pioneers, amen?

Not just James and Ellen, but the many pioneers that sacrificed in order for us to have a worldwide movement that's still thriving and growing today.

So I'm blessed to be a part of this movement and I'm glad that you're here tonight as well to hear about how God has led in our past and is wanting to lead us today as well.

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

Bible starts its book of Revelation, the book of Revelation starts with these words.

Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the 7 spirits who are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness.

Friends, when someone takes a witness stand in an earthly courtroom, What is 1 of the first things that you want to know about this individual?

That they are telling the truth, isn't that right?

Now the Bible tells us that Jesus is a witness, and what kind of witness does it tell us that he is?

Later in Revelation chapter 3, we are told that he is a faithful and true witness, the faithful and true witness.

Now, with Jesus as a witness, we can be assured that we are going to hear the truth and nothing but the truth, amen?

And you know, praise God that he has a message for us tonight.

Now I wanna say, Christ is called the faithful and the true witness.

And like it's often said, sometimes the truth hurts.

And in this message, Jesus does not hold back.

But the good news is that Jesus never shares the plain facts when they're painful in order to hurt us, but to help us.

Christ always works, never to harm, but always to heal.

You still wanna hear the voice of Jesus tonight?

Why don't we bow our heads and ask for his presence in a special way.

I'd like to invite you to pray along with me.

♪ Into my heart ♪ ♪ Into my heart ♪ ♪ Come into my heart ♪ ♪ Lord Jesus ♪ Into my heart, come into my heart, Lord Jesus.

♪ Come in today ♪ Come in to stay ♪ Come into my heart ♪ Lord Jesus Father in heaven, you have heard the prayer of our hearts.

We want you to enter into our hearts and we know that Jesus is called the faithful and the true witness.

Tonight, Lord, we want to hear His voice, and not the mere voice of a man.

We pray that you would speak to us through the power of your Spirit in an incredible way tonight, Lord, that none of us would leave these doors the same way we entered in them, but that we will leave determined to follow you more fully and give our lives to you more completely.

Tonight, oh Lord, as we examine the Laodicean dilemma, we pray that your word will be clear to us.

We pray that we will clearly answer your call to us.

We love you, Lord, and we ask for your presence in a special way, in Jesus' precious name, amen.

It was the last decade of the first century.

A majority of the first generation of Christians, those who had walked and talked with Jesus, had passed away into the sleep of death.

Those who had witnessed the Pentecostal power of the Holy Spirit had gone to their graves.

And now the Christian church faced the fiercest threat that it had faced up until this point.

The Roman Emperor Domitian demanded and actually decreed with a law that everyone in the kingdom of Rome had to worship him.

The Christian church was faced with a serious problem.

They knew that they could only pay homage and give worship to their Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

What were they going to do now that this law faced them?

They needed a fresh revelation of Jesus Christ.

They needed to know that their Lord was in heaven and that the king who was upon his throne was infinitely greater than this proud pagan monarch.

The last of the 12 apostles who was still alive was John the Beloved.

The early church historian Tertullian tells us that when Emperor Domitian decided to try to get rid of him by throwing him in a pot of boiling oil, that when he did so, God miraculously preserved his life, and John, rather than writhing in pain and losing his life, stood on the bottom of that pot of oil and continued preaching at Domitian.

God preserved his life miraculously in the same way that he did with those 3 Hebrew men back on the plains of Dura in Babylon.

Seeking to silence the voice of John the Beloved, Demetian exiles him to the lonely isle of Patmos to work in the mines hoping that this this man would simply pass away and die on this island.

Little did Domitian know that from this island would come a revelation of Jesus Christ, a fresh revelation of Jesus Christ for all of the Christian world, not only in that day, but throughout the rest of human history.

The book of Revelation opens with John's vision, His vision of Jesus, the 1 who is the first and the last.

The 1 who is called the Alpha and the Omega.

He saw him walking amidst the 7 golden candlesticks there in the heavenly most holy place.

The holy place, sorry, the holy place of the heavenly sanctuary.

And as he saw Jesus there, Jesus had a specific message for him in the beginning of the book of Revelation.

And I'd like to draw your attention there from which we find Jesus' message to us.

You see, Jesus had a message for John to relate to the 7 Christian churches across Asia Minor in modern day Turkey.

While these messages were actually relevant and applicable to the 7 local and literal churches there in Asia Minor, Bible students have long understood that beyond being applicable and relevant to those specific 7 churches there in John's day, These 7 churches were symbolic of time periods that God's church would go through down through time until Jesus came again in the clouds of glory.

There were more than just 7 churches in the ancient world in John's day.

God could have written more than 7 letters or he could have chosen other churches.

Or even of the 7 that he chose, he could have put them in a different order.

But because these 7 churches characterized what God's people would look like down through time until his second coming?

God decided to write to them in that specific order and to send them those very messages.

Now, I wanna invite you to follow with me on the screen.

For the sake of time, we're going to have the verses on the screen.

In Revelation 3, verse 14, the Bible says, these things, and this is Jesus' message to the last church on the list.

Before we get to the verse, I just wanna say that if the last church on the list, if there is a last church on the list and the church is represented God's church down through time, then it goes to say that the last church on the list would be God's last day church.

The last church on the list would be God's symbolic of God's last day church.

And this is the message that Jesus has, starting in Revelation 3 and verse 14.

These things says the amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God.

2- The Savior’s Solution

He was nearing the end of His life and ministry on the earth.

He was going to continue on with the plan of salvation.

And Jesus said these words, Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say?

Father, save me from this hour, but for this purpose I came to this hour.

Therefore the people who, excuse me, then a voice came from heaven saying, I have both glorified it and will glorify it again.

Therefore the people who stood by and heard it said that it had thundered.

Others said an angel had spoken to him." Friends, what happened on that day?

Were there 2 separate events that took place at the same time?

Did it thunder or did God speak from heaven through an angel?

What's very interesting is that there were people in 1 crowd, but they heard 2 different things.

The question is what made the difference and why?

Why did some people hear 1 thing and other people hear another.

The answer is that spiritual things are spiritually discerned.

Friends tonight you're either going to hear 1 of 2 things.

You're either going to hear the voice of a man booming through a microphone and just making noise, or you're going to hear the voice of God to your soul.

How many of you want to hear the voice of Jesus tonight?

Let us ask him for just that, Let's pray.

Our Father in heaven, Lord, we are sojourning in this earth.

We are but strangers here and heaven is our home.

And the children of Israel, when they left the bondage of slavery in Egypt and they were wandering in the desert.

Lord, when you rained down manna from heaven, they went out to collect their food and they said, manna, what is it?

And Lord, we come tonight opening your word, the bread of life, and we ask, what is it?

What is it that you would have for us to hear?

We pray that the message that we would hear would not be from a man, but that it would be from the Son of Man, Jesus Christ.

May He speak loud and clear and we pray that it would resonate and that we would respond.

Send your Holy Spirit to help us discern the spiritual item of your Holy Word, we pray in Jesus precious name and everyone said, amen.

Just to quickly review, we're going to examine the message, a message from Jesus this evening.

You're going to find that it's a simple message.

It has just 3 parts, but the Lord has a special message for us tonight.

Tonight we are examining Jesus' solution to the problem of Laodicea.

We're going to examine the 3 solutions that he gives in Revelation chapter 3 verse 18.

As we see this together, and you're welcome to turn there in your Bibles with me, we're going to have the verses on the screen, a majority of the verses on the screen for the sake of time, but I encourage you to follow along in your Bibles.

How many of you brought your swords this evening?

Now just to review, to catch us up to where we are now, so far we have talked about, so far we have talked about, we have discovered together that Jesus in the beginning of the book of Revelation had a message for John to relate to the 7 churches in Asia Minor, 7 of the many Christian churches.

And these messages did not only apply for the Christians then in the first century, but they actually applied prophetically to God's church down through time.

Each church representing a time period that God's church would go through all the way until the end of time.

So we see that it makes sense that the last church on the list would represent God's last day people, amen?

And the last church on the list is none other than the Laodicean church.

Now, this is the church that represents us as God's last day remnant people.

We're gonna talk about our understanding of this and how it grew as a people on Friday night and you're not gonna want to miss that.

Now we saw together on Sunday night that Jesus describes the church of Laodicea as saying, I am rich and have become wealthy and have need of nothing.

But he says, you do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked.

We learned that Jesus drew a stark contrast to the physical reality of their riches because Laodicea was a wealthy city, the Wall Street of the Middle East at the time, but he was saying, in spite of your physical riches, you're spiritually poor.

Interestingly enough, Laodicea had a medical school and a world-renowned ophthalmologist, an eye doctor.

Not only that, they manufactured eye medication for the world.

Yet, Jesus said in spite of this, you're spiritually blind.

And it was not by coincidence, but Jesus gave them a striking explanation of their spiritual status because they actually manufactured black wool garments and supplied them to the Middle East.

So Jesus was directing them to their problem, but praise God that when Jesus points out the problem, he doesn't leave us there, amen?

And tonight we're going to discover just what that solution is.

I'm excited about this evening's message.

Now remember, Laodicea's greatest problem is not that they're wretched, it's not that they're miserable, it's not that they're poor or blind or naked, but the dilemma that the Laodicean church is in is that they don't even realize it.

And friends, we have the tendency to think that a strong message doesn't apply to us.

We tend to think that it applies to someone else And it's all too easy to think that we're okay when we're actually not.

And this is the message that Christ wants to get through to us.

We think that it may apply to those around us.

I'll never forget, I was about 11 years old, and my parents and I were driving from Fairfield, California, back home to Angwin, California, and it was about an hour's drive.

We were in the city of Fairfield, and it was my mom in the front passenger seat, and my dad driving, and my best friend Scotty and I in the back and we pulled out onto the road and it was in the middle of the city and it was slow, praise the Lord it was slow, but we said, hey look at that guy going the wrong way.

And then a few seconds later we said, hey, there's another 1.

0, wait a minute, we're going the wrong way.

The Bible says in Proverbs 14, verse 12, there is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof is the way of death." And praise the Lord that that wasn't literally fulfilled on that day, amen?

But it's all too easy spiritually to think that we're alright, to think that we're going in the right direction when we're actually going in the opposite direction of where we should be going.

It's all too possible for us to think we're okay when we're dangerously driving in the wrong direction, so to speak.

You may be wondering, can I ever really know if I'm going in the right direction?

That I'm in a saving relationship with Jesus?

Is there such thing as true assurance of eternal life?

And that is such an important question that we're taking 1 whole sermon to address it and we're preaching it twice on Sabbath.

And don't miss that this Sabbath, safe and secure or not so sure.

The Lord would not have his people wondering if they're saved.

He wants us to have the blessed assurance that we are safe in Christ, amen?

Jesus tells us plainly that we are spiritually wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked.

The Savior doesn't just point out the problem and praise God that he supplies the solution.

Now, I just want to invite you to look at Revelation 3 verse 17 with us.

Revelation 3 verse 17, if you're there in your Bibles, Go ahead and turn there, it's up on the screen as well for the sake of time once again.

But there the Bible gives descriptions and Jesus actually gives some adjectives about the church of Laodicea.

All right, he says, because you say I am rich and have become wealthy and have need of nothing, and do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked.

All right, now we're going to go to verse 18 and count how many solutions Jesus gives us.

3- Wretched, Miserable, Victorious

So tonight's message, wretched, miserable, victorious.

God has created a diverse world, hasn't he?

I had never seen a kangaroo, except on TV, until today.

We went up to Sunnyside and James and Daniel and Teresa and Junior and I got to see Sunnyside to get a tour, an incredible tour.

We got to go to Avondale and I got to see the college that the Lord revealed to Ellen White that that was the land that needed to be purchased.

And you know, it's called Sunnyside because her life was so happy while she was there.

Maybe not at first when she was going through some real health challenges, but as time went on, she really came to love Australia, and I can see why.

But yesterday, we were in the Blue Mountains, and you're just incredibly blessed with a beautiful country, and these are just small glimpses of heaven, our homeland, amen?

I don't know about you but I cannot wait until we can enjoy the glories of eternity with Jesus, our Lord and soon-coming King.

Before we get our message tonight, I'd like to invite you to bow your heads with me.

♫ Praise God from whom all blessings flow ♫ Praise Him all creatures here below.

Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, Amen.

Father in heaven, we praise you for your goodness to us.

We thank you Lord that you are a God of love, you are a God of selflessness, to the point that you gave your life for us, you were willing to surrender eternity and to come and be born a man and to live life on this earth.

Not only that, but to live and die in our place.

And tonight, as we continue our study into the Laodicean message, and as we Continue to hear your final call to us, Lord, we pray, that you would open the ears and the eyes of our heart.

Help us to hear your voice, and may we see what you want us to see in your holy word.

Speak, Lord, for your servants are listening.

There was a little boy who, well, not so little.

There was a young man who drove up to his school 1 day, back in the 1950s, and he proudly drove up a truck that was making all kinds of funny clinks and clanks and noises and he opened the door and walked into his school and the little schoolhouse there.

He had a big smile on his face, his first day driving this truck to school, and his teacher said, hey, Tom, what kind of truck is that out there?

And he proudly said, oh, that's an RFD truck.

And the teacher said, I haven't heard of that model.

Well, friends, we as Christians are RFD people.

Not only are we rescued from the dump of sin and of selfishness, but we're rescued from death.

Not only are we rescued from death, but God wants us to be ready for deliverance when he comes.

We indeed are RFD people, and friends, Jesus is coming very soon.

He's making his appeal, he's making the final call to all humanity.

He's coming soon and he wants us to be ready for deliverance.

We've been examining Jesus' message to us in the book of Revelation.

Jesus' message in the book of Revelation.

And we have been discovering that Jesus, in the beginning of the book of Revelation, instructed John to write 7 letters to the 7 churches in Asia Minor, which is modern day Turkey.

Here's a map of eastern Turkey so you can see.

Jesus specifically told John the words to write because Christ had a message for those 7 local literal churches in Asia Minor in the first century.

We know, once again, that these 7 local literal churches are symbolic of prophetic time periods that God's church would go through, down through time, all the way until Jesus' second coming in the clouds of glory.

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Series

The Final Call

3- Wretched, Miserable, Victorious

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

The Power of Grace

54m

The Final Call

5- Safe and Secure, or Not so Sure?

53m

One With Him

1h 11m

Secrets from the Ancient Sanctuary

05 Millions are Looking at the Wrong Temple

46m

How Jesus Treats the Untouchables

55m

The Stress Factor

52m

Plenary Meetings

More Answers

53m

I’ll Have a Diet Pepsi

58m

A God Worth Knowing

14 The Coming Crisis

1h 3m

Sacrifice of Thanksgiving

1h

Plenary

Truth Only

51m

A God Worth Knowing

11 A New Birth

52m

Sound Doctrine