Lukewarmness.
I. The first alarming symptom of lukewarmness is a growing inattention to the private duties of religion. And among these are private prayer, the study of the Bible, and self-examination. The lukewarm Christian begins by omitting his private devotions on the mornings of his busiest days, or on the nights when he is wearied and worn out in the service of the world. Next, he contrives to shorten his prayers, and leaves his Bible-readings for Sundays. Thus little by little lukewarmness takes possession of the soul, and brings forth its shrivelled and sickly fruit.
II. Another evidence of the encroachments of lukewarmness is carelessness in attending public worship. The single sin of neglecting public worship, if persisted in, will eat out of the soul every germ of its spiritual life.
III. A third symptom of lukewarmness, about which there can be no possible mistake, is an indifference concerning the benevolent enterprises of the day and scant offerings for their furtherance. The disease of lukewarmness is so very prevalent that its presence has ceased to create alarm, and people are sometimes found who have exalted this sin of lukewarmness to the rank of a virtue. They admire and praise the zealous man of business and zealous patriot, but when they speak of the zealous Christian the word suddenly changes its meaning, and it becomes little better than a sarcasm and a sneer. The philosopher's good man is four-square; and cast him where you will, like a die, he always falls sure and steady. It is only such who can make the world better and happier, for they give it the advantage of precept and practice both.
J. N. Norton, Golden Truths;p. 113.
References: Revelation 3:15. H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, Sunday Sermonettes for a Year,p. 88; F. O. Morris, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xvii., p. 148. Revelation 3:15; Revelation 3:16. Preacher's Monthly,vol, ii., p. 424.
Revelation 3:15 , Revelation 3:19
I. Look at the loving rebuke of the faithful Witness: "Thou art neither cold nor hot." We are manifestly there in the region of emotion. The metaphor applies to feeling. We talk of warmth of feeling, ardour of affection, fervour of love, and the like; and the opposite, cold, expresses obviously the absence of any glow of a true, living emotion. So, then, the persons thus described are Christian people with very little, though a little, warmth of affection and glow of Christian love and consecration. (1) This defectiveness of Christian feeling is accompanied with a large amount of self-complacency. (2) This deficiency of warmth is worse than absolute zero. If you were cold, at absolute zero, there would be at least a possibility that when you were brought into contact with the warmth you might kindle. But you have been brought into contact with the warmth, and this is the effect.
II. Note some plain causes of this lukewarmness of spiritual life. (1) The cares of this world; the entire absorption of spirit in business. (2) The existence among us or around us of a certain widely diffused doubt as to the truths of Christianity is, illogically enough, a cause for diminished fervour on the part of the men that do not doubt them. That is foolish, and it is strange, but it is true. Beware of unreasonably yielding to the influence of prevailing unbelief. (3) Another cause is the increasing degree in which Christian men are occupied with secular things.
III. Note the loving call to Christian earnestness: "Be zealous therefore." The word "zealous" means literally boiling with heat. We must remember that zeal ought to be a consequence of knowledge, and that, seeing that we are reasonable creatures, intended to be guided by our understandings, it is an upsetting of the whole constitution of a man's nature if his heart works independently of his head; and the only way in which we can safely and wholesomely increase our zeal is by increasing our grasp of the truths which feed it.
IV. Observe the merciful call to a new beginning: "Repent." There must be a lowly consciousness of sin, a clear vision of past shortcomings and abhorrence of these, and joined to these a resolute act of heart and mind beginning a new course, a change of purpose and of the current of our being.
A. Maclaren, Christian Commonwealth,April 8th, 1886.