Show His Love

You don’t have to be a marketing expert to take a lesson in false advertising from Laodicea. A city in the Roman Empire, Laodicea was the first city in the world to boast hot and cold running water. Using the genius Roman technology of aqueducts, they channeled hot water from a nearby hot springs and cold from a cold spring in the other direction.

It was an amazing vision and only Rome had the confidence and cash to pull off such a venture. Trouble is, the technology of insulated pipes was more than a thousand years away. By the time the hot water got to the city, it was no longer hot. The cold was no longer cold.

Like the fabled naked king in The Emperor’s New Clothes, nobody dared to say the Roman design was a failure. At the ceremony to celebrate this crowning achievement, a dignitary took the first drink, and to the shock of all present, spit it out and declared it disgusting!

The word went out that Laodicean water was not what it was advertised as. It was lukewarm. Imagine the impact of Jesus’ words to the Laodicean church in Revelation 3:14-17: “And to the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write… I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I could wish you were cold or hot. So then, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of my mouth. Because you say, ‘I am rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing’ and do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind and naked.” 

Ouch! They understood and it hit home. They were not what they advertised and it made God sick. They were a church that didn’t deliver on its promises. What about us?

We say Jesus saves, that He heals and turns bitter places sweet and dark places light. Problem is, without a display of changed lives, our advertising is false.

Are you advertising the goodness and mercy of a loving, powerful God who has worked a miracle in you?