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With Christmas season here and everyone shopping and buying everything under the sun, let us not neglect some purchases that God has recommended . . . “And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write; These things saith the Amen, 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 spue thee out of my mouth. Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked: I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see. As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent. Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me. To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.” (Rev. 3:14-22) According to Jesus, the church at Laodicea, an ancient city in Asia Minor, was in a mess . . . Verses 15-16: She couldn’t refresh thirsty souls like cold waters, nor could she offer any real comfort or cleansing like hot water. She was neither cold nor hot, just lukewarm, which means she was of no use to the Lord. Consequently, He promised to reject her by using the similitude of spewing her out of His mouth. Verse 17: Laodicea was a very prosperous city. She was the banking center of the whole region, she had a medical school that invented medicines for the ears and the eyes, and she produced a special glossy black wool, which was marketed throughout the world. This city had so much wealth and pride that when an earthquake left her with enormous damage in 60 A.D., she refused to accept aid from the Roman government, choosing to rebuild everything herself. Laodicea was a very wealthy, proud, self reliant and self righteous city. The church that the Lord had placed here failed to influence this city for Christ. Instead, the church became influenced and indoctrinated by the city! Just as the city was too proud to receive help in 60 A.D., this church was too proud and too blind to receive spiritual help by 96 A.D. Verse 17: This church was so full of itself that it’s the only one of the seven churches that actually speaks about itself. It’s the only church that says, “I.” Like Babylon the Great in Revelation 18:7, this church is full of itself and feels no sense of spiritual need. Verse 18: Having only material wealth, like the unsaved heathen of the city, this church was told by the Lord to buy some real gold, some “gold tried in the fire,” which is tried and proven faith in God’s word, according to I Peter 1:7 and Psalm 19:10. Rather than being proud of their shiny black wool clothing, the Lord told the people of this church to buy some better clothes, that is the white raiment of righteousness (Rev. 19:8). He also made a near sarcastic reference to their famous eyesalve and its inability to help their spiritual blindness. In helping so many to see physically, these church members had become blind to spiritual things, just like the Pharisees (Mat. 23:16, 24; John 9:40-41). Verses 19-20: This is the only case in all of the letters to the seven churches in which the Lord makes appeals to the individuals within the church (“as many as . . . if any man . . . come in to him . . . he with me”.) The church as a whole body is terminally ill (see Isa. 1:5-6), revival is out of the question, and it’s up to the individuals in the church to face reality and take personal action in order to maintain fellowship with the Lord Jesus. Now, that is the condition of the Laodicean church of the Bible. The Lord’s estimation was that it was wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked. As with any other passage in the Bible, any Christian or any church, at any time, can benefit by applying these spiritual truths. That much is pretty well understood and agreed to by most everyone. But what is not so understood is the fact that Laodicea also represents the last days of the church age. Each of the seven churches of Revelation chapters two and three represent a time period in the church age. Philadelphia, for instance, is the church of the open door (Rev. 3:8), the church that was faithful with the word of God. The Philadelphia church matches the period in church history known as the reformation, about a four hundred year period running from around 1500 till about 1900. It is in this time period that you find all the great protestant movements, all the great revivals and awakenings, all the great missionary endeavors, and it is in this period that we find the King James Bible being translated. “thou . . . hast kept my word” (Rev. 3:8) is a fine description and compliment for the Philadelphia church period. But then comes Laodicea, the church of the closed door, with Jesus standing on the outside knocking (Rev. 3:20). As we’ve already seen, the Lord’s estimation was that this church was in a real mess, in spite of the fact that this was a materially wealthy church. Again, the Lord picked a perfect match for describing a period in church history. Much like Laodicea, modern Christianity is materially rich but spiritually poor. We have elaborate buildings, family life centers, bus ministries, youth programs, junior churches, large membership rolls and dual income families driving new SUV’s and modeling all the latest styles in clothing. Yet the average professing Christian has never read his Bible through even once, doesn’t tithe, doesn’t give to foreign missions, doesn’t pray regularly, and has never led a single soul to Christ. Instead of being rich and increased with goods and having need of nothing, the average Christian today has need of plenty because he is wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked! In other words, if you could buy modern Christianity for what God says it’s worth and then sell it for what man says it’s worth, you could probably become the world’s first trillionaire! Let’s take a look at the three things that God says modern Christianity needs, three investments that need to be made, or three purchases, if you will. The Lord said in Revelation 3:18, “I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see.” Jesus is the great Counsellor of Isaiah 9:6, and He gives three bits of counsel to modern-day Christianity. And please note that the Lord says to “buy” these things. It’s almost a tongue-in-cheek statement where God is saying, “Hey, since you folks are always into buying things, how about buying a few things from me?” He then tells them what to buy, which is what we’re going to look at for a while. I know that salvation is free, but what we’re going to look at today not free, and, if you don’t choose to purchase these three things, then you will be wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked. I. Buy Some Gold The Lord said in verse eighteen to “buy of me gold tried in the fire.” He’s obviously not referring to physical gold because he just rebuked the church for trusting in material wealth. No, this gold is a different kind of gold altogether. This gold is the gold of I Peter 1:7. Notice the wording: “That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ.” So this gold has to do with you exercising faith in something and then having that faith tried just as gold is tried in the fire. Let’s go to Psalm 19. Referring to the word of God mentioned in verses seven, eight and nine, verse ten says, “More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold: sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb.” The word of God is to be more desired than much fine gold, which is refined gold that has been tried and made pure. Do you happen to know of a Bible translation that has been tried and made pure? Let’s go to Psalm 12 and read verses six and seven: “The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. Thou shalt keep them, O LORD, thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever.” He compares the word of God to silver here, instead of gold, but it’s the same principle. God wants you and I to invest heavily in His words! In addition to the King James Bible being the final product of a seven step purification process, it has also been tried by millions of believers for over four hundred years and been found to be pure and more precious than gold. That’s why David said, “The law of thy mouth is better unto me than thousands of gold and silver” in Psalm 119:72. God wants you and I to invest in his word by learning it and by exercising faith in it. He wants us to know the Bible and live by it. Think of all the Christians today that don’t even tithe, that don’t even give the minimum contribution of ten percent to a local church. God made his tithe and offering principle clear in Malachi 3:8-10 when he said, “Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings. Ye are cursed with a curse: for ye have robbed me, even this whole nation. Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the LORD of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.” God said that he will bless those who are obedient in this most basic heritage of the righteous, yet millions of Christians refuse to step out on faith and take God at his word. Paul even stated that God loves a cheerful giver (II Cor. 9:7), and he said that we will reap bountifully, if we give bountifully (II Cor. 9:6). Yet, many Christians today bring in several hundred dollars weekly, some even more, yet they think they can pay God off with a mere ten or twenty bucks. God says they are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked, and they need to start buying some of his gold. Do you know what happens when you put God’s word to the test? God will put you to the test just to see how serious you are. Abraham, for instance, is said to have believed God in Genesis chapter fifteen. Even though Abraham had no son, God said that he would multiply Abraham’s seed as the stars of heaven, and it says that Abraham believed it. Then God decided to see how much he believed it. He told Abraham two chapters later that the promised son would come from his ninety-year-old wife, Sarah. Did Abraham believe it? No, he fell on his face and laughed (Gen. 17:17). There was no gold there! Nor did he buy any gold when he concocted the plan to get a son through Hagar, a woman that was not his wife. Abraham’s Jewish descendants are still paying for that one (Gen. 16:12). Finally, the promised seed came when Isaac was born through Sarah in Genesis chapter twenty-one. God required them to name the boy Isaac (which means “laughter”) as a perpetual reminder of their lack of faith, because both of them had laughed at God’s promise. But, with all of that behind them, they were ready to enjoy their new son and eventually see their descendants multiply as the stars of heaven. Oh, it was a joyous occasion, indeed! People everywhere were talking about this miracle of two elderly people having a son! But there was one problem: Abraham still didn’t have any gold. He had some wood, hay, and stubble as a result of running down to Egypt, lying about his wife, and fathering a child through Hagar, but he still didn’t have any gold. God wants all of his saints to have some gold, yet Abraham had none. That was about to change with one of the biggest steps of faith ever taken by a human being. Abraham is going to go for the gold. You see, when you do something just for yourself, that’s like wood, hay, and stubble, because it doesn’t earn you any reward or blessing. It’s just plain old selfishness. Then when you do something for others, that’s like silver, which is pretty good. But when you do something just for God, that’s where the gold comes in. Abraham probably thinks that life is going to be smooth sailing from here on out. He has his son, Isaac, and Hagar and Ishmael are out of his house. God worked it all out somehow, and now everything is going to be alright. Then came the test, the biggest test of his life: “And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said, Behold, here I am. And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.” (Gen. 22:1-2) Wow! Now, that’s a test! Not only was Abraham expected to believe that God would give him a son in his old age, but he was also expected to believe that God would raise the boy up, if he sacrificed him on an altar! Women down in Egypt loved their gods enough to throw their babies to the crocodiles in the Nile, so it was time for Abraham’s love and faith to be tested. And he passed the test gloriously! He stated that he and Isaac would return (Gen. 22:5), which means that he believed that God would raise the boy up after he killed him (Heb. 11:19). Then he took the boy up the mountain, laid him on the altar, and was about to slay him when God stopped him. God’s response was “now I know that thou fearest God” (Gen. 22:12). He was saying, “Now I know . . . now I see some gold.” That’s what God wants from us. Put God’s word to the test so that God can put us to the test. Then we can join the gold club with saints like Abraham, Noah, Daniel and Job. In fact, it was Job who said, “when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold.” (Job 23:10) God said, “I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire . . .” Have you bought any gold lately? When’s the last time you grabbed onto one of God’s promises and just stepped out on faith? When’s the last time you left your comfort zone and stepped out with nothing but a promise? You can’t get the gold until you do. II. Buy Some Clothing In addition to telling modern day Christians to buy some of his gold, God also told us to step into his clothing store and buy some of his “white raiment” so that we won’t be running around naked. Now, the white raiment is not hard to identify. The twenty-four elders were clothed in white raiment in Revelation 4:4, and the overcomers of Revelation 3:5 will be clothed in white raiment. Then the armies of heaven that follow the Lord at the Second Advent are “clothed in fine linen, white and clean” (Rev. 19:14). Then to clear it all up, Revelation 19:8 tells us that “fine linen is the righteousness of saints.” Friend, you can wear any brand name of clothing that you want to wear, and you can wear as much of it as you want to wear. You can even wear a snow suit on top of it all and a mink coat on top of that, but you are still just as naked as a newborn baby in God’s sight, if you are not living a righteous life. God said that’s what modern Christians are like. They’re all dressed up physically and visibly, but they are naked spiritually! Instead of living holy and separated lives for the glory of God, they attend the most worldly churches they can find, they walk and talk like the world, they dress like the world, they think like the world, they marry up with the world, they educate their kids like the world, they worry about the world, and they even buy their “Bibles” from the world! They have no righteousness, only worldliness, and they are naked in the eyes of God! Mark 10:50 says that blind Bartimaeus cast away his own garment and came to Jesus! Did you get that? He counted his own garment to be worthless compared to what Jesus had to offer! Peter speaks about being “clothed with humility” in I Peter 5:5. Many unsaved people, on the other hand, clothe themselves with cursing, according to Psalm 109:18. Isaiah 61:10 says, “I will greatly rejoice in the LORD, my soul shall be joyful in my God; for he hath clothed me with the garments of salvation, he hath covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decketh himself with ornaments, and as a bride adorneth herself with her jewels.” Notice that he didn’t say that he was clothed with the garment (singular) of salvation, but with the garments (plural) of salvation. That is, a man is washed in the blood of Christ and born again like a new baby. Then he’s supposed to start putting on some clothes, like humility, grace, longsuffering, quietness, obedience, knowledge, wisdom, faith, and so on. The more spiritual clothing he wears the more Christ-like he becomes and the less worldly he becomes. Do you know what Rebekah did when she got ready to meet Isaac? She took a vail, and covered herself. (Gen. 24:65) That’s what modern Christians need to be doing in these last days just before they meet Jesus. He warns us all in Revelation 16:15, “Behold, I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watcheth, and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked, and they see his shame.” Are you well invested in some good spiritual clothing, or are you running around in a spiritual bikini or maybe totally naked? III. Buy Some Eye Salve Alright, we’ve been to Lord’s precious metals exchange and looked at His gold, and we’ve been to his clothing shop and looked at his fine and white linen. Now let’s step over to his pharmacy and see about this eyesalve that he has prescribed. He says in Revelation 3:18 to “anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see.” He already told us that we are blind (vs. 17), so now he’s telling us what to do about it. As mentioned earlier, the Laodiceans were known for a special eyesalve that helped people far and wide to have better vision, yet these folks were blind as a bat spiritually. The Lord is telling these people that are used to seeing so well that they are spiritually blind because they don’t see as he sees. I Samuel 16:7 says, “the LORD seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart.” These people were so spiritually blind that they couldn’t even see their own spiritual condition, much less anyone else’s. They were wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked, and they didn’t even know it! God told them to step into his pharmacy and get some of his eye salve. Now, how does one buy God’s eye salve? Proverbs 29:18 says that where there is no vision the people perish, so it must be pretty important; so how do we get this all-important eyesalve? Well, the rest of Proverbs 29:18 can answer that: “Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.” Friend, you can’t keep it if you don’t read it. Psalm 119:130 says, “The entrance of thy words giveth light; it giveth understanding unto the simple.” If a man is blind, then he sees no light. So a man that doesn’t faithfully read and study the Bible is spiritually blind. Psalm 19:8 says, “The statutes of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart: the commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes.” Do you want some of God’s eyesalve? Then get the Book open and keep it open, and you’ll start seeing all kinds of things! Isaiah said, “Seek ye out of the book of the LORD, and read . . .” (Isa. 34:16). I’ve always liked Hebrews 11:27. It says that Moses “endured, as seeing him who is invisible.” He couldn’t see God literally, yet he lived as though he saw him all the time! That’s what this eyesalve business is all about, a spiritual medication that helps us to see people and things as God sees them, and that’s what the Bible helps you with. People often wonder how much Bible to read. I can answer that for you, if you happen to be wandering. You should read and study the Bible until you see God and until you keep on seeing him even after you close it. Whatever amount of Bible reading and prayer that it takes to get you to see God all of your waking hours, that’s how much you need. Everything gets filtered through God. God’s will is considered in every decision. You understand everyday things, people, conversations and news events in the light of God’s word instead of taking the standard worldview. When your life is lived “as seeing him who is invisible,” that’s when you’ve properly applied God’s eyesalve and are benefitting from it. So, we need three things from God, and all three must be purchased. They are not free. Salvation is free, but God’s gold, his fine white linen, and his special eyesalve will cost you something. They will cost you a lot of time, some friendships, some self -pride, and probably even some money. But it’s well worth it. In fact, it’s the best investment you will ever make.