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Source: https://www.sermonindex.net/speakers/brandon-doll/our-attitude/
Revelation chapter 3, verse number 14. Revelation 3, verse number 14. And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write, These things saith the man, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God.
I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot. I would thou wert cold or hot. So then, because thou art lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth. Now back to the gospel of Matthew, please.
Matthew 24 for a verse. Verse number 12. Matthew 24, verse number 12. And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. To 2 Timothy, please. Chapter 2, verse number 3. And thou therefore endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.
No man that woreth entangle himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier. Now back to 1 Corinthians for a couple verses. 1 Corinthians chapter 6, verse number 20.
For you are bought with a price. Therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit. Which are God's. Chapter 13, verse 1. 1 Corinthians 13, verse 1. Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.
And though I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith so that I could remove mountains and have not charity, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned and have not charity, it profit me nothing.
Lord, bless to us the reading of his word. Six days ago, I was visiting with a man back home, and in the neighboring town, they got a new pastor in a particular church. And so you know how it goes. The guy has to complain about the old pastor.
And I said, well, how's your new pastor? Oh, he's a good pastor. I said, what makes him good? I said, does he tell you what you want to hear or what you need to hear? He said, he tells us what we need to hear.
And I said, well, what'd he tell you? He said, he told us if we didn't change our attitude, we were going to destroy this church. I said, that's not what people want to hear. You know, I got thinking about that.
And I started to examine myself and my attitude. And I'd like to talk a little bit this afternoon about attitudes. And I'm going to ask that question to you. If the assembly that you're a part of all had the same attitude that you have, how well would it be doing?
Or would my attitude, if it spread to other people, would it bring down that local assembly, our attitude? I'd like to look at our attitude at four different things today. And we started in Revelation.
And I just want to take this attitude of lukewarmness, this attitude of indifference. It means tepid. And I didn't know what that word meant. I had to look it up. But it means half-hearted. It means apathetic.
It means indifferent. It means unenthusiastic. A tepid attitude in the assembly. And a tepid attitude. Half-hearted. An attitude. You know, attitude is something that we all face. We all have to deal with it.
We all, maybe we don't all struggle with it. But as I listened to this man telling me what his pastor told him, I had to acknowledge in my own heart, I've got an attitude. An attitude that wasn't right.
And God used that to speak to me. But here we've got lukewarmness. And you know, I used to think when I was a young Christian that certainly the Lord was unreasonable. Certainly, lukewarm is better than cold.
And, you know, I was trying to understand what this verse meant. That the Lord wished they'd be cold rather than lukewarm. But it come to me like this. There are things, brethren, we need to be cold against.
And when we're lukewarm, we're going the wrong way. And I'll explain myself in a moment. And there are things that we need to be on fire for God for. And if we're going lukewarm, we're going the wrong way.
And so I'd like to look at our attitude in four different things today. I'd like to look at it in our attitude toward lawlessness. Toward sin and defilement. I'd like to look at our attitude toward our liberty.
And we looked a little bit at this in Manchester. We're just going to touch it. And we're going to look at our attitude toward lordship. Toward the lordship of Christ. And finally, the attitude of our love.
Our love. Lawlessness. Sin and iniquity. What kind of an attitude should a Christian have toward sin and toward iniquity? Brethren, it should be absolutely cold. If you've heard of the cold shoulder. We shouldn't tolerate sin and lawlessness.
Not for a moment. Not for a moment in our thoughts or in our actions or in our assembly. Are we cold? Are we hot? Or are we lukewarm concerning sin? Concerning lawlessness. If we're lukewarm, we're going the wrong way.
I think of the Lord Jesus. Was he ever lukewarm towards sin? The most compassionate man that ever lived. Absolutely, he was not lukewarm towards sin. God hates sin. The Lord Jesus Christ addressed sin.
He called out the hypocrites. He called out the self-righteous. He overthrew the money changers. He had no place in his heart for tolerance of sin. It was sin that took him to the cross of Calvary. Resisting unto blood.
Striving against sin. But you know what we're doing? We're becoming lukewarm towards sin. Aren't we? Let's be honest today. When you look at the news. When you look at the media. Does it absolutely appall you the things that are going on in this world?
Or do you blow it off as ho-hum with just another day? I hate to say it, but we're becoming warm towards sin. We're letting things slip that we've never let slip before. We're tolerating things that we shouldn't be tolerating.
And we're becoming lukewarm when we should be cold. Well, we should be cold. I don't mean unloving. God loves the sinner. But he hates the sin. God, he would rather us be cold or hot than lukewarm. And it helped to explain this in my own thinking, at least.
And it helped me to appreciate this verse. That God would rather have me be cold or hot. Let's think of sin and defilement. When I'm lukewarm. When I have a mediocre attitude towards sin. I become defiled.
You think of Samson. He had an attitude, but he was indestructible, really, didn't he? He put himself in places of compromise. He put him in situations where sin could abound. He was through the vineyard.
And he was with the lion. And he was with the honey. And all you know the story of Samson. But he had an attitude. He had an indifference towards sin. Brethren, when we're defiled, it affects us. And it affects our assembly.
It's real. Sin is real. And we have to be careful that we're not becoming numb to the reality of sin in this world and in our life. We laugh at sin. We joke at sin, don't we? If we're honest, we do. I'd like to look at a conscience that is defiled.
When a conscience is defiled, there's a lack of peace, isn't there? When your conscience is defiled, there's something in there that's bothering you. And you have no peace. And so there's four things about us that can be defiled.
Our conscience can be defiled. Our spirit can be defiled. And when we have a bitter spirit or a spirit that's been defiled by sin, we lose our joy, don't we? When we have a heart that has been defiled, our love is corrupted.
It's no longer that pure love, is it? It has been defiled. It has been corrupted. And we can read that our bodies can be defiled through fornication. Defilement in the believer. Have you ever went to the counter or to the dishwasher, maybe, and you're going to grab a clean dish, and you're going to go to use it, and you find out that it's not clean after all?
I had an uncle, and I'll tell you, he absolutely grossed me out. The kids had gone to school, and they'd left a little milk in a bowl there from morning, and it was now in the afternoon. And we come in from what we were doing, and he drank that milk.
They've been sitting there since morning. The dirt, it was thick. That bowl shouldn't have been used. That bowl was defiled. It needed to be clean. And if you and I are going to be used by God in the way that he wants to use us, we need to be clean.
When we have a clean conscience, we have peace. When we have a clean spirit, we have joy. When we have a clean heart, we feel we have love. But when it comes to our defilement, we're careless to sin. Careless to it.
It doesn't scare us like it ought to. Sin ought to terrify us. It should terrify us. We're clueless about defilement. We don't realize that we're defiled. We don't realize the damage that it does and if I have an attitude or you have an attitude concerning lawlessness and sin, it not only might bring us down, but it could bring the assembly down.
Because a little lovin' lovineth the whole lump. And it spreads. And if I'm indifferent to sin, the people watching me will be indifferent to sin. And if I'm indifferent to being defiled, people that watch me will be indifferent to being defiled.
And so we're careless with sin. We're clueless about defilement. We're contaminated for service. But thank God we can be clean from defilement. By the washing of the water of the word and the blood of Jesus Christ his son cleanseth us from all sin.
And we keep short accounts with God, don't we? When we sin and we realize that we confess it before God, the penalty's been paid at Calvary. But to maintain the relationship and the fellowship and the communion, we confess it before God.
We call it what it is. And so there is something that we have to be cold against. We have to be cold against lawlessness. But we read in 2 Timothy 2 verse 4 about being entangled, a loss of liberty. How much do you value the liberty you have in the local assembly?
On a scale of one to ten, ten being the highest, how much do you appreciate the local assembly? And the liberty and the privilege to function as a priest? And the liberty to be guided by the Holy Spirit of God?
Do we appreciate that? Or is there an attitude of discontent coming in? An attitude of the liberty that we have? Being purchased with the blood of Christ, being brought with a great price, being shown assembly truth and assembly principles and the pattern found in the New Testament.
Do you appreciate it today? I think those of us that were raised in the assembly, that our parents were in the assembly, or our grandparents were in the assembly, I want to make an observation here today.
The assembly means less to us than it did to them. Do you know why that is? It's because it cost us nothing. We didn't have to forsake or be forsaken by our families. We didn't have to face the reproach and the loneliness and the heartache and the tears to be a first-generation Christian to stand for the truth.
It was given to us in a golden platter. What's your attitude toward it? Do you want to change it? Do you want to change it? As young people travel and move about, they see people doing things this way.
Well, why don't we do it this way? It's not according to the pattern. But it seems so nice. It seems so warm. No, it's not according to the pattern. An attitude to the liberty that we have in God's assembly, the freedoms that we have.
What a privilege. But there's an attitude against it. Is it in you? I want us to think today. I really want us to search our own souls. I don't want to tell my heart and your heart something that we want to hear, but it's something we need to hear.
Brethren, we're lukewarm concerning sin. And we're lukewarm concerning God's assembly. We really are. And now when we've got the assault on liberty, in Galatians chapter 2, you've got those that come in to spy out our liberty.
The outside world hates our liberty. False teachers hate our liberty. There's an assault against it. There's an assault against it. Galatians 5, there's appreciation of it. There's the abuse of liberty.
When I take that, what do I have liberty to do and stumble a Christian with it? And I abuse it. And you could go to the context of the meets in Corinthians to know that it'll stumble into someone, and yet I take my liberty and do it anyway.
And I abuse my liberty. And then there's the action of it when we love and serve one another. Am I indifferent to that liberty? You'll see it in patriotic things. You'll see people that paid a price for something.
And over time, that price is valued less and less. And freedoms are given away that once were fought for and blood was shed for. And I want to say this. Blood was shed so that we could gather and appreciate our Lord in his own appointed way.
Blood was shed. The precious blood of Christ to deliver us from sin, to set us free, not only from our sin, but free to serve him in his own appointed way. Then we come to Corinthians in chapter 6. And we read that we are bought with a price and therefore glorify God in our body and our spirits which are God's.
Lordship. What's your attitude toward lordship today? Are you willing to submit to everything that the Lord Jesus Christ has asked us to do? We've heard already much about this today. Or are we just going to do what we feel like suits us?
This is what I feel as far as I need to go. This is really all that, that, I guess this is all I'm willing to go as far as the lordship of Christ. That there is too personal. That there is asking too much.
Can the Lord or does the Lord have the right to ask us to do something too hard for us that we think is too hard for us? Let me put it in a different way. If the Lord would ask you to give your life, would it be too much for him to ask?
If the Lord would say, I need you over here, would it be too much to ask for us to move? Is it too much for Christ to ask to get us out of our comfort zone? How much authority does the Lord Jesus have over my life?
These thoughts search my soul. What is my attitude toward the Lord Jesus? What is your attitude toward the person of our Lord Jesus Christ? Is he only a good friend? Is he the only one that the one that you call upon in time of distress, in time of trial, in time of trouble?
Or is he your lord and master? If I have a lukewarm attitude toward the lordship of Christ, it could destroy an assembly. It could destroy my testimony. Let me put it this way, if it never changes, it will.
It could spread to others. When every man does what is right in their own eyes, go back to the children of Israel. God was their God. You come to judges, everyone's doing what's right in their own eyes.
Could that happen in an assembly testimony capacity? Things are written for time are written for our learning. What is my attitude toward the lordship of Jesus Christ? I am bought with a price. You are bought with a price.
I am not my own. You are not your own. And the Lord Jesus has every right and every authority to tell us how to live. What's my attitude toward the lordship? When I have a lukewarm attitude toward lordship, I have a low esteem of the price that was paid for me.
In fact, I have a low esteem of the person, the one that died on the cross for me, when I have a lukewarm attitude toward lordship. And I have a low estimation of the promises that he has given. In other words, I don't trust him.
Really, that's what we're saying. When we're lukewarm toward the person of Christ and him being our lord, we're really saying this, I don't trust him and I know better. And that's an attitude that will destroy a Christian and it will destroy a local assembly.
But finally, when it comes to Corinthians 13, we've got love. And I think where we read in Matthew that because of iniquity abounds, the love of many shall wax cold. What's happening? A love that was hot, a love that was on fire, because of iniquity is starting to wax cold, it's beginning to chill.
It's turning, maybe it's turning lukewarm. It's not the temperature it ought to be. It's getting cooler. It's getting colder. And I think of the attitude here that though I speak with tongues of men and angels and have not love, I have become a sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.
Could I just touch on a little of our attitude and our love for the Lord? It's been touched on in plenty today, but never can be enough. And if we love him, we will keep his commandments. And if we love him, we will feed his sheep, won't we?
And if we love him, we will love the brethren. That's what he says. And if we love him, we'll meet with him whenever he calls us to gather with him. What is my attitude and my love toward the Lord Jesus?
Because iniquity abounds, because we become cold, because we become lukewarm toward iniquity and not cold. Our love starts to turn cold, doesn't it? Sin affects us, brethren. It absolutely affects us.
You can't see it and not be affected. You can't hear it and not be affected. It's that real. It's that prevalent. And it affects our love toward Christ. And here it affects our love toward others. If I have not love, I communicate nothing.
That's what he's saying in verse 1. Though I speak with tongues of men and angels, just sounding brass and tinkling cymbals, there's nothing communicated without love. And then he goes on and he says, I am nothing and it profits me nothing.
My love toward the Lord Jesus and my love toward the brethren and my love toward the lost and the actions that I do and the things that I do and I do them without love, they're nothing. Though I give my body to be burned, that seems unreasonable to me.
But it must be because it's in the Bible. It seems unreasonable to me that if a person would give their life, but yet they did it with no love in it, it'd be nothing. Brethren, can I take a few moments and look at Calvary?
Can we go there and can we look at the Lord Jesus Christ? Do you think he was indifferent to sin at Calvary? He was never indifferent to sin. But I just want to focus our attention there for a few moments.
At what sin did to the Lord Jesus Christ as he suffered the wrath of God for sin. As he died to pay the purchase price, the price of our redemption. The one that was marred more than any man and his form more than the sons of men.
And the one there that the waves and the billows of the wrath of God went over his soul to satisfy God's throne so that you and I could be forgiven the price he paid for sin. And you and I, we take it lightly.
And what about the liberty? The liberty where with Christ has made us free. And the blood that was shed that we might be free. And we might be free indeed. And we might be liberated. Did he take that lightly?
Cost him his blood. What about his bowing his will to the will of God to give us an example at least so that you and I know what it is to surrender our will to him. And not my will, but thine be done.
He said in the garden. What was his attitude toward obedience? What's yours toward obedience? What's mine toward obedience? And what about love? Have you reveled in the love of the cross today? I mean really reveled in it.
Enjoyed it. Have you let it thrill your soul that the lovely man of Calvary as Paul would say, he loved me and he gave himself for me. There was no attitude in the Lord Jesus. No attitude of indifference.
What was cold was cold. Scott likes black and white. I'm talking hot and cold today. What was cold was cold. And what was hot was hot. You cannot find a more passionate love than the love of Christ at the cross.
You cannot find a greater understanding and hatred towards sin than you can find it at Calvary where we see sin judged and seen dealt with when God poured out upon the sin bearer the judgment that sin deserved.
So my question is this. Will your attitude, and I'm asking this to myself as I have been all week, will your attitude destroy your local assembly? Attitude toward the Lord Jesus. Attitude toward the brethren.
Attitude toward the overseers. Attitude. God help us that we might be cold in the things we need to be cold in and to be on fire in the things for which we should be hot.