Key Verse: Revelation 3:16 “So then, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew you out of My mouth.”

Lynn Harold Hough, in his exposition of this passage, draws our attention to the prophet Zephaniah (Interpreter’s Bible, vol.12, p.397). Consider these words:

“At that time I will search
Jerusalem with lamps
and punish those who are complacent,
who are like wine left on its dregs,
who think, ‘The Lord will do nothing,
either good or bad'” (Zeph. 1:12 NIV.)

“She obeys no one,
She accepts no correction.
She does not trust in the Lord,
She does not draw near to her God.” (Zeph. 3:2 NIV)

Zephaniah, of course, was speaking about Jerusalem. But there’s a timeless message here. Hough says it’s a message about “The Wrong Temperature”. He writes, “This is precisely the religious indifference which characterized the church at Laodicea. As a result, the moral and spiritual temperature was all wrong. There was not the bitter cold of hard hostility to God; there was not the glowing heat of passionate loyalty; there was only that “lukewarm’ temperature which is about as distasteful as anything can be. The question is inevitable: ‘Had Christ died upon the Cross and suffered the great passion in order to produce such lukewarm disciples?’ And the question answers itself in the words, “I will spew you out of My mouth.'”

If there is “more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine just persons need no repentance” (Luke 15:7), then we who are saved through faith in Christ should, at least, be as happy and as passionate as we can be about our Saviour. We’ve been saved “from much”; that’s why we should “love much” (Luke 7:36-50).