Sins of Laodicea - Part 4 — Leonard Ravenhill

The Closed Door and the Warning to the Unprepared

God let him do everything except one thing, leave it alone. I'll shut the door. And when God shuts the door, no one can open it. Again, what about the virgins that were left outside? They knocked on the door saying, open unto us.

Empty Works at the Judgment Seat

And he said, I never knew you. In the seventh chapter you have all those men doing miracles and signs and wonders. And when they get to the judgment seat, God puts the torch to all their life and it's a pile of ash.

Earthly Ministry and Eternal Reward

They've got nothing for it. It's wood and hay and stubble. Your life can be wood, hay, stubble, or silver, gold, and precious stone. Wood and hay and stubble are above the ground. It's ministry everybody sees.

You flash it on TV to show how big and famous you are. Poor old Oral, you know what he's going to do now? I got this just after one person that said it from one of his greatest men up there. Told a friend of mine this week, Oral is launching into a 200 million dollar complex.

It's got three rings. I'm tempted to say it's a three ring circus. You know what the first one is? It's an entertainment center for the poor weary Christians that got tired of laughing at night. Johnny Carson.

He's going to have an entertainment section, you know. I think they're going to call it the upper room. No, the supper room. Can you think of a man putting 200 million dollars of God's money in a thing like that?

But the second circle is Bible lands with the, what is it, six stations of the cross? How many is it? 10 or 12? 12. The 12 stations of the cross animated. The third is Oral Robert land. Showing him as a boy, and who do you think is going to animate all the things?

Now don't laugh, it's true. Disney. After all, they animated Mickey Mouse and Minnie. So why not do it for Oral? I'm angry. You send your ties to that stupid thing? You're agreeing with the condemnation.

You'll be condemned with it. You're agreeing with the worldliness of it. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. You know what? He's still outside the door. Go to town, you see a church with a family center next to it.

Christ in the Midst of the Gathered Church

You've got a hundred people crushing in there every night, a hundred and fifteen, twenty in the prayer meeting, if that. Do you think Jesus is standing in the midst of a show? There's only one place for Jesus Christ, and what did he say?

Where two or three are gathered together, there am I, where? In the midst. Read the twenty-first of Revelation, there are thrones. There are four and twenty elders, and he's in the midst. And there's a lamb upon the throne, and he's in the midst.

That's the only place where Jesus is comfortable, where he's the center, where he's the master of ceremonies. I stand at the door and knock. If any man will hear my voice, hear this people's soul clothing through the world.

Laodicea’s Wealth and the Need for Spiritual Sight

The historic record is they had a a breed of sheep that were never known anywhere else, and they produced black silky wool that made the most precious garments that people could buy. Kings used to buy.

But the other great export was eyesalve. Look at the irony. I counsel thee to buy of me eyesalve. That stuff you have is no good. They had a little block, they bought a little block and they crushed it and mixed it with water and put it in their sore eyes.

After all, they had no sunshades. And they went over burning deserts where the sand would blow in their eyes, and they had tremendous discomfort. And he said, I'll give you eyesalve. As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten.

Be zealous therefore and repent. I stand at the door and knock. If any man hear my voice, I like that phrase. I like the defiance when the Apostle Paul says it. I like it when Jesus stood in a crowded place with maybe 5 ,000 people standing around.

The New Birth and the New Creation

And he stood there where the priesthood stood every day for six days and poured out water from a golden vessel on his shoulder brought up from the pool of Siloam and a big orchestra singing. And Jesus stood exactly in the same place and said, If any man thirst.

That was a smack in the eye for the Jews. They said, We have a monopoly of gut. Jesus says, If any man thirst. Paul goes better than that. 1 Corinthians 5 .17, I think he says, If any man, being Christ.

I love that. Any man, anywhere, at any time, being Christ, God doesn't plug you up where you're leaking. He makes you a new creature. If you didn't get a new heart and a new mind and a new hope and a new appetite for God's Word and a new appetite for prayer, you may have changed your moral standard, but you're still dead in trespasses and in sin.

I don't believe that 5 of the Christians in America are even born again. Never mind, fill with the Holy Ghost. And that goes for England, goes for Australia. The most radical thing in the world is the new birth.

He makes us a new creation. The Spirit who brooded over there, over the chaos in the garden, in the beginning. The Spirit that brooded over us in the beginning is the same Holy Spirit that brooded over the holy men and were moved by the Holy Ghost.

The Holy Spirit’s Transforming Movement

Wherever the Holy Ghost goes, there's movement. It doesn't have to be visible. He came across a man planting a sycamore tree, herdsman of Tikal, and made him a prophet. He came over a little woman. People passed her going up the road and looked at her and said, You know, that woman's pregnant.

She isn't married. What are we coming to? Passing the Virgin Mary within touching distance of the Son of God, the Eternal Son of God. The Holy Ghost did it. A bunch of unlettered, unnamed almost, unusual men met in the upper room.

And what happened? God turned them inside out. Then what happened? They went and turned the world upside down. He said, If any man hear my voice, when the whole of Europe was as black as night, one man heard God.

Martin Luther and the Recovery of Justification by Faith

Of course, you know his name, Martin Luther. What happened? He shook the whole of Europe. He didn't invent justification by faith. He came to a cemetery. The church was a cemetery full of dead men's bones.

And he was made alive. He said, It came one moment when I was browsing over my sins and Satan came in with an inkwell and a pen and he wrote on the wall of my cell the sins of my youth, the sins of my manhood, the sins of the flesh, the sins of the spirit, the sins I remember, the sins I've forgotten.

And then he laughed in my face and said, There you are. All your sins that you ever committed. Martin Luther says, Write one more. There isn't one to write. Well, then, if there's not one to write, write across them all.

The blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanseth me from all sin. I'm a free man. I don't need the priest. I don't need the sacraments. The doctrine of justification was restored through Martin Luther.

John Wesley’s Aldersgate Transformation

At about a quarter to nine on the 24th of May, 1738, John Wesley says in his diary, I went somewhat unwillingly to a place in Aldersgate Street and a man was reading a preface to the epistle to the Romans.

Listen, a preface, not the epistle. He was reading a preface to the epistle to the Romans by Martin Luther and it was just about quarter to nine on the clock and I did feel my heart strangely warmed and I said, I believe that Jesus died for my sins.