The Revelation 3:14-16 | Episode # 1025

September 12, 2025

Hope Alive: Applying God’s Word to Your Daily Life

The Revelation 3:14-16

I am Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and had been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life. The purpose of studying scripture is that you might know the character of Jesus Christ, and that you might see the world from the Father's perspective. That you gain wisdom that changes your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open His word to you and allow you to see Him and to know Him. To know His will, that you might glorify Him and that you might walk in faith and power each day, especially today. In Jesus name.

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Transcript

This is Chad Harrison, and you're listening to Hope Applying God's word to your daily life.

Hi, this is Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and have been serving as a pastor for 25 years.

I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life.

I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open up his word to you and allow you to see him and to know him and to know his will, that you might glorify him and that you might walk in faith and power each and every day,

especially today in Jesus name.

Last,

last church in the Revelation and to the angel of the Church of Laodicea of the Laodiceans, Right?

These things says the Amen, the faithful and true witness,

the beginning of the creation of God.

Now, what he's telling them is, I'm about to tell you something that is You. You need to get this.

This is. This is a. This is a my he. When Jesus says, I'm the faithful and true witness, I'm the beginning of everything.

What he's saying is, look, this is kind of rudimentary stuff right here. This is like the starting stuff.

This stuff you got to get right. If you don't get it right, you can't get anything right,

okay? He says. He says,

I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot.

I wish you were either cold or hot.

Now,

people don't really.

They. They don't get this, okay?

Hot is always the Holy Spirit and faith. It's. It's the fire, the power of the Holy Spirit, okay?

And it points to faith and it points to trusting God,

all right?

Cold is the law,

okay?

It tells us a lot about God, but it just don't ever get us there.

You following me?

It just is.

Okay?

Tells us,

but it can't get us to where we need to be.

But I want you to notice, he says,

I want you to be cold or hot.

So if you're not going to, you know, operate in the spiritual,

well, you better get busy living by the law,

all right?

And. And he says that.

And in many ways, for me, this kind of points to the Jewish people, too,

okay?

Because they're all cold,

but now they're hardcore cold,

okay?

They. They. They're heavily into the law,

and they live by it.

Not perfectly,

but they live by.

Okay?

And. And certain Christian sects have a lot of legalism.

And, you know, even the Apostle Paul kind of moved. Set. Set aside for that. When he's talking about eating food,

sacrifice to idols,

he said, you know, if it offends your brother, he's saying, you need anything you want to.

He says, but, you know, if you got this legalistic brother who,

who it's going to hurt, you know, just don't need it in front of him,

you know,

just don't need it in front of him unless he's making you not eat it,

you know?

And so God's saying something here that is important.

He's saying,

I want you to. I'd rather you be hot. But, you know, if you're one of the other, don't try to straddle the fence,

okay?

Don't try to have the power of the Holy Spirit and the law,

okay? If you're going to do the law, do the law.

And, you know, we have even denominations we call the Frozen Chosen. You know,

we even. We. We do that.

And, and that's because they're usually very cerebral and, you know, they have. They want to do it, you know, certain things, just certain ways. And they got rules. And,

you know, they're not always biblical rules, but, you know, they're rules for them, and they all follow them.

And you and I, you're going, what nomination talking about? There's about 10 or 15 of them, okay? You can just, you can go around, look for them.

And some of them even think they're the only ones getting in,

you know, and when they get to heaven, when St. Peter's leading you around and you get to see all the different groups in heaven and you can't go in the door there, and he says to you, why can't I go in?

Well, they think they're the only ones here. You know,

they're those groups, okay?

And I want you to hear me. They're very faithful to their legalism,

all right?

It's not our job to pull them away from the legalism. It's the Holy Spirit's job to do that.

But I will say this.

You can't fulfill the law except that the Spirit leads you to fulfill the law.

And so that is a struggle. That's a difficulty.

The Holy Spirit brings you into all righteousness, all holiness, which includes being right by the law,

okay?

I mean, you can't say, well, I was led by the Holy Spirit and that guy cut me off, so I shot him.

Well, no, I don't think the Holy Spirit told you to do that,

you know, because that's called murder.

And, you know, in the law, it says you shouldn't murder.

So I don't think the Holy Spirit told you to do something that's outside of the law.

But,

but that being said,

yeah, it's a sin. That's exactly right. So the Holy Spirit leads you to live a holy, righteous life,

which means you learn to live.

Live. But remember, it's a.

You are able to fully do it when you walk by the Spirit.

The Holy Spirit allows you to have the ability to actually live it out.

Now you go, well, how do I know I'm living in that? Well, you, if you'll notice when you start walking with God, you start not doing those things.

They become a part of your life and you struggle with things that you wouldn't have struggled with before. You just kept doing them right,

which is the Holy Spirit leading you in it.

He says, I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I could wish that you were cold or hot. What he's saying is, I wish you were one or the other.

I know your works.

He so, so, so then because you are lukewarm, neither cold nor hot,

I'll vomit you out of my mouth.

There's no way to get around that. That's not a pretty picture. Okay?

You know it. He says, I vomit you out of my mouth. What he's saying is, I don't like lukewarm. I don't like mixture.

Don't mix them.

Don't have your group of rules that you've come up with. Man made rules, man made law.

And then, and then try to live by the Holy Spirit too.

It's not going to work. That's not, that's not how that works.

You, you've got to, you got to either live by the spirit or live by the law.

If you live by the spirit, it'll teach you to live by the law.

If you live by the law, well, you're not going to have a whole lot of heat,

okay?

You're going to be.

It's going to be really cold,

okay?

But he says, I'd rather you be one or the other.

Now that is Jesus in the heart of God speaking to his church.

So if you're going to be one or the other, be one or the other. Don't play games in the middle.

And a lot I'm going to tell. I want you to hear me, hear me today.

The problem that many of our denominations have had is they spent decades trying to be hot and cold,

okay?

They spent decades trying to, you know, they, they want some of the Holy Spirit,

they want some of the law.

But they don't want all the law or they don't want all the Holy Spirit,

okay?

And that puts them in a rough position because, you know, you're compromised in many ways,

you know, because people are going to look at your rules and say, are you living by them?

And I'm telling you, you're not.

I can tell you the day. And I was a big old boy that was kind of like a bull in a china shop. When I came to this realization as a youth pastor, it really got me out of youth ministry.

I want you to be.

Just be straight up and honest. It got me out of youth ministry. And reason it got me out of youth ministry is I realized I need to get the parents fixed,

you know,

But I can remember having rules in the church I was in and teaching those rules to my teenagers only to find out their daddies, who were deacons had six packs in the refrigerator.

So, I mean, it was hard for me to teach you to live by this law.

And your dad's who. Who's a leader in the church who tells everybody that's the law,

ain't living by it,

right?

He's neither cold nor hot.

It's hard to deal with people who would tell me, chad, I like what you say, but can you tone it down a. A bit?

That's a struggle for me.

What they're saying is, I like you hot.

I just want you warm.

You know,

I can remember,

I remember vividly,

vividly being told by somebody I heavily respected, who was a leader of the church,

that, you know, if you stay hot like this too long, you'll burn up.

And I was sitting there thinking, well, third day says, our God's a consuming fire.

I didn't realize it was in scripture. And then I found it in scripture.

That's a good song, too.

Our God is consuming fire and the flames burned down deep in my soul Our God,

he is a consuming fire he is.

He told me I need to tone it down.

Well, I knew that wasn't right because I'd been told a couple times earlier that that wasn't right.

And so we went on that mission trip, and at the end of the mission trip, There was like 500 teenagers there, and well over 200 of them gave their lives to ministry.

And actually, I got a lot of them that are Facebook friends of mine that are still in the ministry.

And after that, he said all that thing I said to you about being too hardcore, Just forget that.

See, God wants you to be. If you're going to be fired up,

if you're going to walk by faith. You're going to have to walk in the fire of the Holy Spirit, so you don't have to be hot,

okay?

But if you just really love the other, then you need to understand you got to live exactly by it.

You can't just pick the part you want. You got to live by the whole thing.

He says so because you're lukewarm, neither cold nor hot. I'll vomit you out of my mouth as you go. Today I pray that the Lord will.

Bless you and keep you, that he'll make his face to shine upon you and that he will give you hope and peace today in Jesus name.